Now here's a more gameplay-oriented one... Why does each dungeon have its own compass that works only in that specific dungeon?

Since when does a compass reveal the location of hidden treasure, anyway? They're magical artifacts that show the locations of hidden treasure, but have to be bound to a specific area. They just happen to look like compasses.

According to Dave Barry, the page quote is allegedly verbatim. However, it doesn't remotely resemble any Zelda game that I'm aware of. Where is he getting it from?

That's confused this troper for awhile as well. The best she can figure, the son (who seemed to be pretty young when he said that) was somehow combining scenarios in his excitement. The "jelly beans" could be gels and the thing about "miniature Ganon" and the "flying eagles" sounds a little like when you fight Ganon and he sends waves of bats after you.

"...and miniature Ganon and there's these things like jelly beans..." The two enemy indicators you see on that game's overworld look sort of like this.

"...and the miniature Ganon is more powerfuller..." The Moblin-shaped things lead to harder encounters.

"...because when you touch him the flying eagles come down and the octopus shoots red rocks and the swamp takes longer." This is an example of a "miniature Ganon" encounter being harder. On swamp tiles, they, unlike the Bit/Bot encounters, have bird enemies ("Mobys" according to Zelda Wiki) and they generally require more time and effort to leave the battle screen, thus "tak[ing] longer." Octoroks always shoot rocks, but I'm willing to chalk that up to a minor mistake on his son's part.

"...and the swamp takes longer." Link is physically slowed down in swamps, both on the map and during battle.

Ages

It's commonly assumed that OOT Link is 10 as a child and 17 as an adult, but there is no official source stating this. The official age is 12 as a child and 19 as an adult, based on Toon Link's trophy data in Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which states he was 12 when he first received the Hero's Garb. As we know from TWW that this occurred on the day he became the same age as OOT Link, that means the latter was 12 as well (and 19 as an adult). Where is the 10/17 figure coming from?

It comes from all the information about OoT before it came out. Every preview said he was 10/17, and I'd presume that came from Nintendo's official statements.

Not true. Link's OOT age is confirmed to be 8, and then 15 for adult Link. Link being 12 in WW is because it's a legend, not a fact that the hero was older. Never mind that the Hero in WW is just the Adult Link, which saved them. So if WW is used as reasoning at all, Young Link was 5 years old in OoT.

Anyone have a link to the source that says he's 8? Because I'm assuming he never ages past 17, and I'm almost sure I remember him being referred to as "a boy of 17" at some point....

I've never, ever seen a source that says he's 8 and 15. Everything I've seen refers to him as 10 and 17.

To quote the Zelda Wiki:

The guide by Nintendo Power states that Link starts his adventure at the age of ten. This is later contradicted by another guide which states that he is twelve.

And then there's my ex-boyfriend, who takes the words "child" and "adult" at face value and therefore insists that the ages must be 11 and 18, because otherwise Link would be an adolescent in one time frame or the other.

Also in The Wind Waker Link is said to be the same age as the hero from their legends, who is most likely supposed to be OOT Link. Just to confuse the issue even more.

Actually, Link's age in Ocarina of Time is confirmed to be 9 as a child and 16 as an adult. Miyamoto said so in Iwata Asks for Ocarina of Time 3D interview. Interestingly enough, he also said Link is 12 in the original LOZ and 16 in Ao L.

ALttP, OoT, and maybe TP Chronological Shenanigans

Okay, I get that OoT is supposed to represent the Imprisoning War that's basically detailed in pretty exact detail during ALttP, but the two things that bug me is how completely different the two different stories are and how people can accept OoT revisionist theory. The tales and recountings of the Imprisoning War in ALttP are far too exact and specific to be an erroneous telling of OoT's events. The main inconsistencies are:

Ganandorf Dragmire led his band of thieves into the Golden Realm, betrays and slaughters them all, and seizes the whole of the Triforce in ALttP. This does not happen in OoT, as he's working alone and only claims the Triforce of Power.

His working alone is never explicitly stated; he has a whole tribe of thieves to help him. And if the entirety of Hyrule is seen in OoT, that's a pretty small population to be considered a nation; there're lots of potential off-screen thieves to help him.

That, and Nabooru's introductory dialogue heavily implies that he led raids on settlements, during which they robbed women and children, and murdered indiscriminately. Whether that's before or after he feigned allegiance to the King is anyone's guess.

Ganondorf's wish apparently shaped the Golden Realm into his image (The Dark World). Again, this does not happen in OoT.

We don't necessarily know that. Rauru mentioned Ganondorf's influence spread even to the Sacred Realm (Golden Realm?), and that the Chamber of Sages was pretty much the final good in the world.

Actually, Zelda explicitly mentions that "the Sacred Realm became a world of evil" when Ganon touched the Triforce. Afterward, the sages refer to it as the "Evil Realm" at one point too.

While Ganon's armies emerge from the Dark World into Hyrule, he apparently remains there throughout the campaign. In OoT, he remains in Hyrule atop the ruins of the castle.

Eh, perhaps he only came out when he discovered Zelda's identity.

The Big One: The Imprisoning War is implied to be an extremely bloody and brutal campaign, but not exactly a protracted one. The Knights of Hyrule escort the Seven Sages (All of whom are Hylian), and are almost completely wiped out while defending the Sages as they set about sealing the Golden Realm. In OoT, the entirety of the Knights are wiped out in short order after Ganondorf seizes the Triforce, and everything is done by one person (who is heavily implied to be of the bloodline of the Knights, but that's pretty irrelevant). He accomplishes this by running around dungeons and then by whacking Ganondorf with his sword a few times. No holding the line, no war, just a series of events.

Ah, but there's a seven year gap for all sorts of blood and brutality to take place. Also keep in mind that in TP (in a separate timeline from the Imprisoning War) we see several sages who were most assuredly not the ones awakened in OoT. Perhaps the awakened sages were "backups" that got left out of the books?

Also, if there be a Retcon here, it need not be in-universe; it's possible history simply exaggerated (as we see in numerous Real Life cases).

The Knights of Hyrule are always implied to have been a comparatively small but incredibly elite subsidiary of Hyrule's armiesnote Exactly how small is up for debate; in their only in-game appearances to date, namely Zelda II and Four Swords Adventures, we meet just two and four of the Knights respectively. That they would comprise the entire armed forces of Hyrule certainly isn't the case. At any rate, one thing is certain. As the legends of ALttP state, only a Knight or his descendant can become the hero who wields the Master Sword. Take into consideration that at the end of OoT, the Hero of Time is forcibly removed from the timeline, and that the King of Red Lions outright states that the boy who would later become the Hero of Winds has no connection to him, and one can only conclude that one of the Knights must have survived Ganondorf's coup and subsequent reign in order to serve as the boy's ancestor.

The Seven Sages were all Hylian, their descendants in ALttP are all Hylian. They were also all apparently aware of their Sage status from the very start, rather than having to be "awakened" by the Hero of Time, and they all had offspring. Every. Single. One of them. In OoT, we had two Hylians, one Gerudo, one Zora, one Kokiri, one Goron, and one Sheikah. Only Princess Zelda survived the events of the Imprisoning War. It's possible that all seven descendants of the Sages in ALttP are descended from Zelda and Rauru (It's not unfeasible that Rauru sired a few offspring before being awakened), but in that case it would be a stretch to refer to the Seven Maidens as descendants of the Seven Sages.

Couple possible explanations for this one:

As noted above, in TP we see an all-new set of sages (and TP takes place in a timeline where the Imprisoning War never started). If these sages were killed in the seven year gap but contributed to the effort enough to warrant recognition over the ones we see (admittedly a stretch), their descendants could be the ones seen in ALttP.

Actually, the populace at large might not know the sages have been replaced. Those events happened inside sealed temples, mostly to members of other races without much contact with Hylians. When they learned Gandonorf's been sealed by the sages, they might have assumed it was the original set.

Alternatively, as Wind Waker shows, the descendants of the sages aren't always of the same race. Unless a blood relation is specifically mentioned, this could be a case of WW-style "descendant-hood."

Since ALttP occurs in the unseen timeline where Link fails to defeat Ganon, it might be that he never awoke the Seven Sages of OoT (which might even be the very reason that he lost), and that the sages of the Imprisoning War are entirely different people.

Time. Sahasrahla specifies that the Imprisoning War took place three or four generations prior to ALttP, and quite a few of the peasantry across Hyrule is able to provide what they know of the events when prompted. This implies that the War is a fairly common history fact. In TP, which occurs between the two games, the Imprisoning War is all but forgotten, which is extremely odd considering that if OoT and ALttP are four generations apart, and TP and ALttP are at least one generation removed, there would have been people in TP who either lived through the War or have someone within two generations of their family that did. In real life terms, this would be like myself or my parents forgetting completely about World War 2 despite having (living!) relatives who lived and served through that period, but my children suddenly gaining full knowledge of the event.

Thing about the split timeline is that TP's timeline never experienced an Imprisoning War. Ganondorf was apprehended before he could steal the Triforce, leading to his execution as seen in TP. Therefore, no one in TP would have any idea of what happened in the Adult timeline. ALttP, on the other hand, is built around the Imprisoning War, placing it in a separate timeline from TP.

I don't buy that OoT is set in the same "timeline" as ALttP. I accept that TP shares time with OoT, but history between ALttP is too different from how things happened in OoT. The geography is different, the history is different, and the people are different (No Gorons, only River Zoras exist, absolutely no hint that the Gerudo or Sheikah existed).

An interesting point is that, when rescued, one of the Seven Maidens states "If a person who has an evil heart gets the Triforce, a Hero is destined to appear..." which implies something else: As well as there being multiple Links and Zeldas, there are multiple Ganondorfs. The one that terrorised Hyrule through OoT, TP, and even WW is a different one to ALttP (and probably the Oracles and NES Ganons). ALttP probably takes place either in a different continuity to pretty much every game that was released after it (except for LA, OoS, and OoA, there seems to be a thin thread of connection between them), or is so late in the timeline that OoT's Imprisoning War is completely forgotten and ALttP's Imprisoning War is a completely different event. The fact that the Triforce's origin and location is known in OoT (Draw the Master Sword at the Temple of Time, unseal the Golden Realm) but is so utterly forgotten in the ALttP prehistory suggests this.

The theme of history repeating itself crops up time and time again (sorry) in the games, though it's suggested in a far more subtle way than the World of Mana's Captain Obvious-esque dropping the trope in the opening scroll of every game. Maybe it extends beyond Link and Zelda having to always confront Ganondorf, but stretching to the point that entire events will replay at different times with an entirely different Ganondorf.

Thing is, though, Word of God has it it's the same Ganon in all the games (timeline split notwithstanding). The only real issue comes up with his alternate backstory in Four Swords Adventures.

It hasn't been set in stone regarding the OoT/Imprisoning War relationship, so don't just assume they are one and the same. According to http://www.zeldawiki.org/Imprisoning_War, there are also other candidates for the imprisoning war. It is mine and other's belief that the IW is another event altogether. Of course it is also possible that the Imprisoning War was not just one event, but a whole encompassing history. Several of the games have things that sound like the Imprisoning War, but they also all have problems. Ocarina of Time has several, most notably the fact that ALttP mentions that no hero could wield the Master Sword. But in Ocarina of Time, the Master Sword is Link's main weapon. In fact, just try to defeat Ganon without the Master Sword and you will find Ganon will never yield. The Master Sword is the pen that decrees Ganon's defeat in OoT.

As the released timeline reveals to us, A Link to the Past takes place in a third timeline separate from Twilight Princess and The Wind Waker. In this timeline, the Hero of Time was defeated. No hero could wield the Master Sword because the Hero that was meant to failed. Without Link, Hyrule descended into a terrible a brutal war that was only ended when Princess Zelda and the Seven Sages were able to seal Ganon away into the Dark World, formerly the Golden Realm. This conflict, which never took place in Ocarina proper because it's effectively the "Game Over" ending, is the Imprisoning War. As for the missing Gorons, without Link to set them free, they were eaten by Volvagia. The peaceful Zoras remained frozen in their domain, likewise; the River Zoras may be the same Zora race, driven feral and violent from their imprisonment, or they may be a separate race altogether. Either way, the peaceful Zoras from OoT no longer exist after the Imprisoning War. As for the Sages, nobody ever said that the Seven Sages are the only people who can be the Seven Sages. Many of them in the Adult Timeline would be dead if not for Link and, it can be extrapolated, are dead in the Defeat Timeline. Likewise, none of the Sages from the Adult Timeline were ever aware that they were supposed to be Sages in the Child Timeline, and thus there is no reason to assume that they are the same Sages that sealed Ganondorf away in Twilight Princess. It is entirely likely that the Seven Sages are a critical role that must be fulfilled by people well aligned with their respective elements, but not necessarily by specific individuals.

Link copies and Triforce of Courage

This is one I just thought of now... if the Link in each Zelda game is supposed to be a different Link, with the exclusion of direct sequels... Why do they ALL have the Triforce of Courage?

They don't. The Link in the original game didn't get it until he found it in Adventure of Link. In The Wind Waker, there's a whole chunk of the quest to get the different pieces. As for the others, it may have to do with them being descendants of each other, or Destiny just Saying So.

Reincarnation and it being in the soul and/or Fate.

Except there's never any implication of Link reincarnating, and several implications against.

Reincarnation is basically Link's MO, with few exceptions, if not by Word of God, then at least in the fandom.

Building off of this, every Link and every Ganondorf and almost every Zelda looks and acts exactly the same. If it isn't reincarnation, its a remarkable facimile of it.

Agreed. If it looks like a duck...

Except almost no two Ganons or Zeldas or Links look similar, except for the clothes, maybe. Show me two different Links that look the same. One of them has pink hair, damn it!

First off, all the Ganons? There are two, and one is only ever seen as a pig, while the other has a far more beast-like Pig form in both appearances. As for Link, WW actively disproves reincarnation AND the need of being a descendant, since OoT Link's soul doesn't exist in that timeline, and he had no children. The only links between them is that they all have the blood of the Knights of Hyrule. So that's a lot of different bloodlines that can produce a Link... except in ALttP, where Link is more or less the only one left. As such, any Link after him would be a descendant. As for Zelda, Adventure of Link has two Zeldas. No reincarnation there.

In most of the games, the Octorocks and Moblins look different too, despite the time period being of hundreds or thousands of years, not the hundreds of thousands or millions needed for the shifts in size, shape, and coloration we're talking about. I chalk most of the differences up to art style; the hair color does vary a little from pure blond to blondish-brown, but the pink was an error, as I recall, and it was canonically blondish-brown there.

But that's how Zelda evolution might actually work. Note the Zora probably evolving into the Rito over only hundreds of years. Plus, if you're going to claim art style as the reason they look different, there's no way to prove they actually look similar or different. I have another way to disprove the reincarnation theory, though. Remember that at least one point in time, there have been two different Zeldas walking around. I'm talking about the Zelda from the original LoZ and the Sleeping Zelda in AoL. I seriously doubt they're sharing the same soul.

Perhaps Our Souls Are Different? Maybe reincarnations of Link and Zelda have two "elements" to their soul — an original component, and the reincarnated component. When the previous Zelda dies, the next one gains the reincarnated component. Also, all royal females are named Zelda except perhaps Tetra depending on what exactly you consider someone's name (what they prefer to be called vs. their birth name/the name of their birthright) so both Zeldas don't have to be reincarnations.

The reincarnation argument is looking really shaky. Having a separate component for reincarnation is not how souls have been seen so far; Spirit Track's Zelda has only one obvious component to her ghost. The whole thing is better explained by her not reincarnating at all. What would the second component DO, anyway?

Just because a princess is called Zelda doesn't mean she's a reincarnation or the champion of the Triforce of Wisdom in the sames sense as the other Zeldas. The Zelda II Zelda predates Ocarina of Time, which was the game in which Link, Zelda and Ganondorf became linked to the Triforce. For that matter every crown princess is called Zelda, but the Triforcey ones only show up every few hundred years when Ganon returns — it's these ones who are reincarnations. As for Wind Waker disproving the idea of reincarnation, obviously no one told Ganondorf since he explicitly claims that Link is the Hero of Time reborn.

Except the King of Red Lions tells Jabun that WW Link has no connection to OoT Link.

In the New Game+, the translated dialogue reveals that both Jabun and the Great Deku Tree initially believe that Link is the Hero of Time, and are not in the slightest bit bothered by the fact that OoT Link would clearly have died hundreds of years ago. In fact, their dialogue suggests that The King was specifically looking for the Hero of Time. They change their minds due respectively to the King's insistence and Link's inability to understand ancient Hylian, but then a major part of the plot is that Link has lost the Triforce of Courage and hence is not at full strength. Note that when Link does get the Triforce of Courage and the Triforce symbol appears on his hand, it's the King's turn to change his mind and he immediately proclaims that Link really is the legendary hero.

The Hero of Winds, not the Hero of Time. And WW Link didn't "lose" the Triforce of Courage, he proved he was worthy of being the hero by finding the pieces. If he was a reincarnation, or a direct descendant, he would have started with it, like TP Link (he's a descendant).

As of Skyward Swordreincarnation has finally, officially been confirmed as not only the reason for more than one Link, but Zelda and Ganondorf as well. Zelda is seemingly always reincarnated within her own bloodline — the bloodline of the Goddess Hylia; Link's reincarnation is just his spirit — all Chosen Heroes of Hyrule have the same spirit; and Ganondorf/Ganon is the reincarnated hatred of an ancient demon. So there we go, reincarnation confirmed.

Not quite. As the Hero's Shade that teaches TP Link has been confirmed to be OoT Link, it can be assumed that all the Links do not share the same soul or spirit. Link does not reincarnate per se, but it is something very similar.

I think you guys are just misinterpreting Demise's words: when he talked about "those who share the spirit of the hero" he wasn't literal; each Link is a different person with a different soul, the only thing they have in common is a heroic spirit (which basically means they all have the balls to face monsters) and a courageous personality, which is why they all bear the Triforce of Courage. Basically, every time an incarnation of his hatred pops up some badass, fearless boy is bound to fight it. That's what he meant.

End result: Everyone is right. Zelda, containing the spirit of Hylia, reincarnates. Ganondorf embodies the legacy of Demise's hatred, and persists through stubborn refusal to die. Link is a wholly new character every iteration, each chosen by the goddess Hylia and/or the Triforce and/or Din/Nayru/Farore to defend Zelda against Demise's hatred.

In Skyward Sword, during the Spirit Trials, the Spirit of the Hero is represented by a flower — the same thing happens in Twilight Princess with the "Vessel of Light". After playing Skyward Sword, I thought that maybe it was the Spirit-Flower that was the reincarnated part.

Sheik's gender

Was I the only gamer who thought Sheik was female? All this debate on Sheik's gender bugs me a lot. She had a feminine voice, what we could see of her face looked like a woman's face, and since she was covered in layers of cloth, we couldn't tell if she had a chest or not. Sure, the developers TRIED to make her gender ambiguous, but I never once thought she was a guy.

The official art◊ makes it a lot less ambiguous, though — broader shoulders, narrow waist and hips, muscular arms and legs... not to mention that if you directly compare Sheik's and Zelda's faces, their facial features (eye shape, eyebrow shape, and mouth shape, if you get the right angle for Sheik) are completely different, too. And I was under the impression that the outfit was skintight (it is in the official art), meaning that any hint of curves would show up - but no, Sheik has a flat chest and muscled limbs.

If that outfit is supposed to be skintight, then it seems that if Sheik is a male then he's missing some... rather important male parts down there.

But Sheik has eyelashes! [jk mode] How could a magical sex change leave Zelda's eyelashes!? I don't care if you show me wider shoulders, well-defined pectoral muscles, and official art of Sheik dropping trou and writing her name in the snow, the eyelashes are proof enough. [/jk mode]

Princess Ruto referred to Sheik as a "he," indicating that at least in-universe, everyone assumedknewinterpreted Sheik to be a man.

As stated, Ruto refers to Sheik as "he". Despite that, pay close attention: Sheik has wide shoulders. Sheik has thin hips. Sheik has a clearly masculine body. On top of that, how much more obvious would it be that Sheik was Zelda in disguise if there were breasts, hips, dat ass, etc? It would be much less of a deal when it was revealed if Sheik had been female. As is supported by dialogue/aesthetics, Sheik was definitely supposed to look like a man, as opposed to the SSB design that made Sheik blatantly female.

You're not alone. This Troper didn't know the player was supposed to think Sheik was male until Ruto threw around masculine pronouns.

On that note I'm a bit annoyed at how this discussion on Sheik's gender can come up and how much evidence can come out yet later be boiled down to being non-canon or not counting by some other reason. Which ones are counting and not-counting depending on who's the one making the argument. I've seen very valid points that could very well justify Sheik being a man as well as a woman, but I've also seen very, very annoying counter-arguments and "evidence" that props up every now and then, including:

Ruto pointing out Sheik is a male. Many can argue that the game series isn't noted for just tossing out information out of the blue that's blatantly wrong, but in this day and age where Retconning and NPCs who blatantly lie or have obvious false information are abundant, it is becoming much more obvious that Ruto may be wrong, not because she's a pathalogical liar (or is she?), but because she just assumed Sheik is male and being the spoiled brat princess she is, she assumes she's right because nobody bothered to correct her. Remember too that Ruto is rather touchy, and when she was a kid she wouldn't let Link anywhere near her until he promised that he would lead her to the Zora Sapphire, then she allowed him to carry her. It is very easy to imagine that with Sheik coming to her and insisting she should follow the sheikah, Ruto argued with Sheik against being dragged and either simply followed herhim...it..., then shared enough humility to give Sheik credit, or escaped herself and just gave credit to the ninja anyways. Being that both means would give a lot of distance between the two, she can't really tell Sheik's true gender and can only assume.

The manga states outright that Sheik is male. Now this is keeping in mind that the manga in question was the fan-translation, which was available to the public prior to the official translation (which I've heard they were releasing, but hadn't seen it. Anyone like to correct that?), and so the common argument against this was A) it was fan-translated and thus could have been altered by someone biased that Sheik was male, and B) the events of the manga differs in areas strongly from events in the game and thus it isn't canon. For those that want to know, in-game Sheik is a disguise well-aware they were Zelda and just hid the fact until the time was right. In the manga, Sheik was its own person that Zelda's conciousness was sealed off in favor for living as the sheikah, and Sheik only reverted after their secret came out that they were Zelda, "killing" Sheik in the process.

Word Of Sakurai revealed in Brawl that Sheik is definitely female and even gave a character model that makes it unquestionably female. Many, many people argued it was canon because Brawl had to have borrowed a ton of material they had to make sure was correct from the given canon sources, but also argued that it's not canon to the Zeldaverse for a number of reasons, including Brawl isn't Zelda or that the Sheik model used wasn't OoT, but TP (in actually, it is OoT upgraded to TP). I'm more bothered by this than most other examples because it would have been a lot more valid to point out that these characters are toys or figments of the player's imaginations thereof and not their canon counterparts, and so the player could have been biased on the fact Sheik was female. It would have been easier to swallow than flat out going "No! Brawl doesn't count! IT DOESN'T COUNT!" and expecting the argument to end there.

The aforementioned image a few posts up. The most common argument boils down to artistic liberties with the character or how old the official art is compared to the model in the game (as in whether or not it was concept art snuck in as official art. Not entirely unheard of.) Then again, N64, with its blocky interface, isn't entirely reliable to telling men from women (except the ones with torpedoes).

Sheik is female because Tetra is female. Many would argue Sheik is not Tetra.

The "Why would Zelda be stupid enough to go through the extremes of a sex change for a simple disguise?", and its arch nemesis, "Why would Zelda risk being lazy in her disguise in front of a relatively Genre-Savvy boss by posing as a chick who just so happen to appear at a time Zelda fled from Hyrule and just so happen to be the only mook he has who backstabs him every time he looks away from her?"

The Majora theory that Sheik is not a disguise, but a true Sheikah who may be male or female and whom Zelda found dying (or killed herself), used the Song of Healing on, and then turned Sheik's soul into a mask to inhabit the sheikah's body (therefore (if male) turning Sheik feminine because Zelda is feminine or (if female) donning Sheik's entire body and skills).

Zelda is female and thus Sheik is female. Argued that Sheik is not Zelda (with varying degrees on the answer to "Then what IS Sheik?" being a costume, an alternative persona, Zelda herself, or something else.)

SSB did redesign Sheik to be unambiguously female, but that is SSB-verse, so taking that into continuity, it would mean Zelda fights Mario/Ness/Ganondorf/Link/Luigi in a battle of ages. Then again, you COULD argue that the hidden Arwing in OOT is canon. Anyway, the whole "androgynous male" argument held a lot more weight in 1998, as it was post-FFVII, which had been released a year before. What you could argue is that 3DS did change the model/use the SSB model, but that would mean that such things like the Stone of Agony would be in Continuity Lockout.

In terms of the manga argument, even the official translation leans to the "male" argument, though again, it isn't canon.

It's not so much these points aren't any more valid than they are invalid so much as how fickle people can be on debunking one of these theories in favor of battling it against another one that's also on this list. (By the way, if anyone else had any more to add, feel free.) note For those curious, I believe Sheik is Zelda's equivalent of Samus's suit, and that Sheik can easily be male as they could be female with or without Zelda's gender accounted for. I also lean toward Sheik being a masculine female, but I try to be very unbiased to arguments for and against this as best as I can.

It could be that Ruto was lying about Sheik being a man. She and Zelda are both Sages, so Ruto undoubtedly would know that the disguise is what's keeping Zelda safe and hidden. All she has to do is refer to Zelda as a "he" to throw everyone off-track, no one would assume that she'd ever lie.

Excuse me, but was the player SUPPOSED to know that Sheik was Zelda before The Reveal near the end? And anyway, in the 3DS version, Sheik's model is much more curvier and feminine, so...

To this troper, Sheik has always been female. It is obvious that magic is used to disguise herself as a male. The question is how far has her magic gone. In game, Sheik seems to be the same as Zelda personality wise. She still has feminine features. But the added masculine features mask the features for those not wary enough. Pay attention and the ambiguity becomes less and hints are dropped. Yes she becomes stronger looking, but women can be stronger, that is not strange. Her magic could also make her voice a bit deeper, and it does, but there is still a feminine quality to it. I see no reason for how a complete biological sex change makes her a better disguise. It is unnecessary in my eyes. Furthermore, because she seems exactly the same personality wise, which a sex change would at least alter a bit. She hasn't created an entirely different consciousness, it is always Zelda behind that disguise. Therefore I conclude at least in my mind Sheik is Zelda, therefor Sheik is female. Some may say that Sheik is more masculine than Zelda. I say that Magic is the cause and that it is much less of a stretch to believe Zelda made herself more masculine than to believe Zelda completely changed her sex and created an entirely new consciousness. Nintendo has stated several times that Sheik is female in SSB which is something they made or had influence in and they heavily implied Sheik was female in OOT 3d by making her more slender and feminine. By contrast. Sheik is only called male once in the game, by someone who may know better than to call Sheik female since it is obvious Sheik was meant to look male for disguise purposes. Other than that, there is the manga, which seems dubious when it comes to whether it is canon. It is essentially a third party production and if it is considered canon, then the Zelda cartoon is just as canonical.

This troper always took from the whole Sheik reveal that Zelda was using a spell that altered people's perception of her body along with possibly changing clothes. With a series that already has a large basis on magic, it wouldn't be difficult to assume Zelda could have used a spell that made her look (and probably sound) male during the events of the game. When it was time for her to reveal herself as Zelda to Link, she allowed the spell to dismiss and changed her clothes magically in a flash to boot. The only reason I assume she's changing clothes between is... I can't see her running around in that dress secretly, even if everyone thinks she looks like a male Sheikiah, wearing a dress when required to run/fight/sneak/etc. would be horrible.

The short version is that there are three main options for what's going on:

The "Shiek" persona is female, but simply looks masculine. Ruto just mistook her for a guy.

The "Shiek" persona is male, but biologically remains female. The male appearance (flat chest, body type, etc.) is just some sort of glamour or illusion magic meant to make the disguise stronger.

The "Shiek" persona is male, and Zelda magically changed her biological gender to facilitate it.

Personally, I find the second option most likely, as the third one just seems way too over-the-top. It's way simpler that Zelda just made herself look like a guy via magic without actually changing into one.

Ganondorf's ears

How did Ganondorf get pointed ears inbetween Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess (or Wind Waker)?

His polygon count went up? Or, he was warped magically during his extradimensional time spent in both timelines? Or evolving artstyle?

He got the Triforce of Power. Go back and fight him at the end of Ocarina of Time and you'll see that his ears are pointed there, as well.

Um, what? No he doesn't. And there's a piece of artwork in the Nintendo Power guide (a cropped version shown here) featuring Ganondorf with a decidedly round ear facing off with Link. Considering the graphical limitations of the N64, I'd say artwork trumps in-game renderings in this case. A better question would be when did Ganondorf's nose get smashed in and who did such a good job of making the new nose look natural?

Here◊; here◊...looks pretty intentional to me. Whatever the child Link case may be, in the future Ganondorf is clearly supposed to have pointed ears.

Both are easily explained by assuming that in both timelines, he managed to be sealed with a very, very skilled plastic surgeon (in the case of the Wind Waker timeline, one must have been sent into the Dark Realm like characters from A Link To The Past. How there is a plastic surgeon in a Medieval Stasis setting is unknown, presumably, they use magic. Very, very specialized magic.

At one point in the game someone suggests that Hylian ears are pointed so that they can hear the voices of the goddesses. Given that Ganondorf had stolen one of the parts of the Triforce and basically strong-armed his way into being the Chosen of the Goddess of Power, it makes sense for his ears to gain points.

"And... two points to Ganondorf for his ears!"

I vote "evolving artstyle".

Courage powers

Given several games in the series offer you the option to acquire problems linked to the Power/Wisdom/Courage trio, why Courage powers are always wimpy? What has attacking from distance has to do with Courage? Or, even worse, teleporting away?

What power would you give courage? That's the hardest one!

Author of the question answering: I'd switch Wisdom and Courage. You'd be rewarded for your courage by gaining defense to fight your enemies; and I guess getting away when things get awry is actually more a Wisdom than a Courage thing, for sure.

I'd take the one that lets me kill all enemies, even bosses, with one hit. I'd be braver with that.

You wouldn't need courage if you had an amazing weapon or perfect shield or whatever — you wouldn't be in any danger, and it would be courage in the OBJECT, not in yourself. Not sure how the weird things match, but I am sure how Amazing Upgrades don't

If warping away from a fight/fighting from a distance is viewed as being 'wimpy' then surely you'd need courage to be able to warp away and face, well, people calling you a wimp.

The words "power", "wisdom", and "courage" are used to represent Din, she of fire and strength, and thus physical and fiery stuff; Nayru, she of kindness and wisdom, who shaped the laws of reality, and thus magical stuff (magic being playing with the laws of reality); and Farore, she who created Life. She is a creator, not a destroyer, and so the most Link — her champion — ever gets from her is a long-distance attack or warp — things you are usually lacking, as she already made you and gave you most of the good stuff she had to give, like instant weapons mastery and the ability to be raped by zombies without even batting an eye.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

If by teleporting you mean Farore's Wind in WW, you don't actually get the power from Farore directly, you get it from a crystal given you by a Great Fairy. Ironically, a Great Fairy who was trapped by a rock. It's possible that the powers are just powered by their respective gods, and don't have much to do with it. Although, it might be useful for Farore to teleport out the people who were stupid courageous enough to get into a situation they couldn't possibly handle trying to be a hero.

Interesting, I'd always used Farore's Wind when I had to turn off the console, so that when I restarted the game and wound up at the beginning of the dungeon, I could warp back to the room full of danger. Alternate Character Interpretation at its finest.

Same here. I use Farore's Wind in to warp to only one place and for only one reason: to the Water Temple's mirror chamber for the purpose of doing battle with my very own reflection. In short: to conquer myself. You tell me if that's brave or not.

Foolish Wisdom

This just bugs me: Zelda, the bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom, keep doing the dumbest things of any character in the series. I know, it's because of her Damsel in Distress status, but sheesh.

Um...mind naming some of those, cuz I'm drawing a blank.

Getting Link to open the gate to the Sacred Realm and dooming the world, for starters.

She didn't have the Triforce of Wisdom then, and she was ten freaking years old, afraid of losing her kingdom, and desperate. Not sure that really qualifies as stupidity, and it's really not "stupidity despite Triforce powers".

Also, she didn't know that Link was going to be sealed away, nor did she know that drawing the Master Sword would open the gateway to the Sacred Realm in the first place.

Indeed, at the end of the game, she admits that her actions before the Time Skip were rather foolish, and that she was arrogant to assume she could control all the variables needed to make her plan work. The fact that her actions in the second half of the game are part of a good deal more complicated plan which succeeds, it is quite clear that having the Triforce of Wisdom greatly increases her intelligence. The only flaw in the plan was when Ganondorf captured her too early, and that was a result of raw power having a temporary triumph over cautious intellect and unbreakable resolve.

She also didn't expect Ganondorf to follow Link, which Link didn't expect either.

It seems like the dumbest thing she's done while in possession of the Triforce of Wisdom is unmasking herself before attacking Ganon. You could argue that she thought she was safe, but given that every last temple in the world has been corrupted by Ganon's magic, and the Temple of Time is in the heart of Ganon's seat of power, what did possess her to unmask there?

Man I Want To Feel Like A Woman Again?

Probably, and the fact that she just came back from a desert; full-body lycra is not a pleasant thing to wear in extreme heat.

It's kind of implied by that point that Ganondorf can see anywhere in Hyrule (he does talk to you before and after the Phantom Ganon fight, for example). Taking that into consideration, she was gonna get found out anyway, so why not choose the most symbolic place in the kingdom to show herself?

Also, her battle plan was to draw Ganondorf out and lure him into the Sacred Realm, and then seal him there. Kinda hard to do that when you stay in disguise. She just didn't reckon with the fact that Ganondorf could go "lol no" and seal her in a magic crystal out of nowhere.

But why couldn't he just do that to Sheik? Even if Ganondorf could only do the crystal thing in the Temple of Time, Sheik was in there before. Surely Ganondorf knew that Sheik was helping Link, so why didn't he cut them off early, why is Zelda suddenly able to be captured when she un-disguises?

Because he didn't know that Sheik was Zelda in the first place. Ganondorf said it himself that if he let Link run around in order to see if he could get Zelda to reveal herself, and she did - he just didn't expect her to be disguised as Ninja McVanishAppear.

Also bringing to light the interesting point that, while this deviates from the game, in the manga Sheik was in Ganondorf's employ, and Zelda's memories were sealed off until Link returned. Why would Ganondorf suspect one of his own followers to be Zelda?

Isn't this the Manga that absolutely mangles the established events of the game and is best ignored? Considering all you see of Sheik is Sheik openly defying and fighting against Ganondorf's minions, chances are no, Sheik was not posing as one of his followers. Not to mention, putting Zelda right under Ganondorf's nose and then making sure Zelda doesn't remember who she is is a frankly stupid idea. "Wow, Link's back, I remember everything...Oh dear gods I helped torch Hyrule Castle town while I had amnesia!" etc. Not to mention the danger of Ganondorf figuring it out beforehand.

You can go ahead and ignore it if you want, but it is canon. While the events play out differently, the "personalities, thoughts and history of characters" fill the gaps in the game "precisely". Presumably, the 'histories' part covers Sheik's origin - as a magical disguise with his own mind who served Ganondorf to hide Zelda's location. Sheik may have been warned by Impa not to do anything too drastic - he couldn't be a mindless drone if he was to be an effective double-agent. Alternatively, maybe he could have just done whatever was necessary to not get caught. We did see that Ganondorf trusted Sheik (to an extent) in the manga, sending him to set traps for Link and to search for Zelda - it was just Koume and Kotake that distrusted him. Clearly, he must have done something to gain that trust.

Again I ask, is this the same manga that directly contradicts the events of the game? From the main page, it says the Manga outright skips the Shadow Temple, and Volvagia is Link's pet instead of, you know, a horrible ancient dragon that eats Gorons.

If that's the Manga you're talking about, I seriously have to call BS about anything in it being canon.

Aonuma did make a point of saying that it was the 'personalities, thoughts and history of characters', though. Okay, so it doesn't follow continuity. But there's nothing in the game that actually contradicts the manga explanation of Zelda sleeping in her mind while a Sheikah runs around pretending to serve Ganondorf. And I'd say that comes under character history. They made a point of telling Himekawa to focus on those elements, not on making it a perfect duplicate of the game - her original intention. So, I'd say canon rights to go Nintendo, who instructed Himekawa to focus on those things.

Implying that a misinterpretation of the interview by one misguided forum user (no offense) Is Word of God. Just because they managed to include story elements that were dummied out from the game's canon doesn't mean it makes the manga more canon than the game. There's a reason they were dummied out. Second: There was absolutely no mention of Zelda's body being changed into that of a boy (Impa is only a warrior, not a sorcerer). Only her mind was changed (which if you think about it, it also brings Unfortunate Implications about Zelda's role as much as Sheik's physical sex, basically being that Zelda cannot do anything by herself).

Or we can chalk this whole thing up to Fan Dumb - "It's canon!" "It's not F'in canon." "Yes it is!" "No it's not!". I see it more as an Pragmatic Adaptation myself, (not everything like the game, but decent in it’s own right) but why don't we fight each other over it - that would be much more mature. After all we can't have people with different opinions running around!. Honestly the fact that your even argueing about this Headscratchers! About the ancient evil dragon thing. It's a bit of a cliche don't you think. Trying to make it more tragic may have been the intention. If you wanna split it both ways Ganon changed the dragon in a way to reflect the Goron's myth as a way of threating them instead of actully reviving the dragon just to make it a double punch to both the Goron's and Link. Also somehow I think reading an exact copy of the game would be... well boring. Some proof as to if the manga is supposed to be canon or not would be nice though.

Guys and girls, in the midst of this riveting debate, I believe you're all forgetting a much bigger screw-up on the part of the "most wise" princess. After the Hero of Time finally succeeded in sealing away the monster she inadvertently helped create, she in her infinite wisdom decided that it would be best to send him back to the past. There are two things wrong with this:

1)Probably first and foremost in her mind was the idea that this was an act of kindness; as an apology for involving him in her mess, she would give him back the years he lost in the process, so that he might live out a normal, peaceful life. Never mind the immense emotional trauma that he must have suffered from aging seven years in the blink of an eye and being forced to mature crudely and abruptly in a very short period of time, think of the shock of having to suddenly revert and live with the memory of a wasteland from from a future that never happened. The boy is fodder for PTSD. No wonder the very first thing he does is go straight to see Zelda. And what does he do afterward? Only three months later, he picks up his sword and goes looking for Navi, his estranged fairy companion, who having lived through it all with him, is the only person he can possibly relate to about any of it.
But looking at the bigger picture, we can see that Zelda made a much, much graver error than being completely inconsiderate of the feelings of her savior.

2)If we look at OOT in the context of the sequels, we have two different endings which happen simultaneously in different endings and have different outcomes. Back in the past, Link informed the King of Hyrule about the threat of Ganondorf note If you're having trouble with the idea that the reigning monarch would believe the counsel of a 12-year-old boy, I would draw your attention to the glowing tattoo of the Triforce of Courage on his left hand, and the whole issue was promptly nipped in the bud. Twilight Princess would follow. The future, however, is far bleaker; for now, Ganondorf is gone (emphasis on "for now") and Hyrule can finally rebuild. As thanks, Zelda sent Link home to his original time, effectively removing any trace of him from the timeline other than word of mouth, as his legend will attest. The Wind Waker would follow. Ganondorf would escape from his imprisonment to wreak havoc once more and fulfill the oath he swore to exterminate the descendants of his captors. "But the hero did not appear." Why? Because he wasn't there. Zelda sent him home. Neither he nor any descendants he may have had were present to stand in Ganondorf's way, for they simply did not exist. Thus, in a truly majestic display of a complete and utter lack of foresight, Princess Zelda singlehandedly doomed her kingdom and all its peoples to destruction, ruin, and ultimately, extinction.

Princess Zelda. The Paragon of Wisdom. And as naive as they come.

Emotional trauma? Do you know why he received the Triforce of COURAGE? I mean...how do I explain...people can see worse things that'll send Nightmare Fuel running, and can still live happily like normal people. Basically, Link grew a pair as his adventure went on. You want him to chicken out as soon as he saw the first Deku Baba?

Some of this has already been said, but I think it bears repeating. A lot of what happened was due to things that Zelda simply could not have foreseen. And even if she did end up making some epically bad decisions (which, again, weren't entirely her fault), this doesn't change the fact that she had seen through Ganondorf's facade long before he made his move. When you think about it, the biggest reason things went so horribly is because no one took her seriously when she tried to warn everyone. And as far as Ganon breaking the seal and returning? Do you honestly think anyone could have seen that coming? And before anyone goes all "LOL IT'S GANON HE ALWAYS COMES BACK!", I mean in-universe. Especially since it's implied that the actual event took place many years (maybe even centuries) after OoT. So yes...it's true that she made a few bad decisions, and that her actions ultimately (yet indirectly) lead to the fall of Hyrule, but it wasn't because she was lacking in Wisdom. There was simply far more going on that she could have ever comprehended. Also, I agree with the person above regarding Link. If the time skip was so traumatizing, I strongly doubt he would have even been able to do anything to stop Ganondorf from taking over, let alone going on a completely new adventure to save a different world from getting pwned by a giant falling moon. Not to mention the number of times the game requires you to go back and forth through time.

Fairy help

Why do fairies keep helping this guy? Yes, I know that a) it's technically guys and b) in each game as you go through fairies are sent to certain locations apparently for the specific purpose of helping you, but this doesn't explain the fairies you occasionally come across at random out in the world. As far as we know these guys are just flitting about happily until you come across and stick them in a bottle, their reaction to which is not to use their vast magical powers to break out of a glass bottle, but to basically go "Right, just for that I'll wait until you die, and then I'm going to bring you back to life. That'll show you."

It's possible that there is some kind of arrangement in place. Something like "If a hylian catches you, you have to grant him a blessing before you can leave." wouldn't be out of place.

I think it's canon to at least one of the games (probably Wind Waker) that the fairies have a deal with the Hylians stating pretty much that they'll do nice things such as healing them and leaving rupees everywhere as long as they aren't mistreated. The implication is that they don't mind being kept in bottles. My theory is that if he falls unconscious, they heal him from inside the bottle, so they aren't stuck in a glass bottle on a rotting corpse for the rest of their lives. He then releases them as per the deal.

Or it could just be that they recognize the Hero for what he is and know that letting him keel over would be a bad thing for everyone in Hyrule. Sure, they may not be happy about being shoved into little bottles, but letting the savior of the kingdom die out of spite or revenge would be rather stupid, so they let bygones be bygones and heal him up.

But they look so miserable in Wind Waker!

It might be somewhat justified in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; in both cases, we were dealing with a Link who had had personal dealings with fairies his entire life. Even if he didn't have his own guardian fairy, Saria did, along with everyone else in the town. The fact that they're sold in Hylian stores could just mean that Hylians keep them as pets.

In ALttP: You rouse a bee, oh no! It's trying to sting you! You snag it with a net and stuff it in your bottle. What happens when you release it? It fights on your side. This helps to explain another IJBM I've had about Zelda, namely, why Link's bottles are so much rarer than everything else that's made of glass. The answer? Link doesn't use normal bottles, but a magical variety of primitive mediaeval Pokeball. It explains everything.

I'm sure that ALttP is the only game to specify that the bottles are magical. I might be wrong about that though. Of course, I've always accepted it as a given that the bottles are magical, especially since Ocarina. You fill a bottle with milk, keep it in your pocket, and wait seven years before drinking it - Go on, try this in real life. I'll wait.

Also seeing as these glass bottles can knock back Ganondorf's dark energy blasts of doom, I highly doubt they are nearly as ordinary as implied.

Unless, of course, it's the power of the Triforce of Courage that knocks back the attacks and not the object Link's swinging itself.

Wallet

Okay, so, seriously, Link's wallet makes absolutely no sense. They can all hold a certain amount of rupees. Like, say, in Twilight Princess, Link's starting wallet can hold 300 rupees. You can get upgrades to bigger wallets that let you hold more. So it makes sense so far, right? It would, except there isn't just one kind of rupee in the world. Red rupees are specifically stated to be worth twenty rupees, and they always appear to be the same size as any normal rupee. Yet if you get one, it counts as you putting twenty rupees into your wallet, despite the fact you only put in one, it just happened to be worth more. See what I mean?

Rupees are magic shape shifting gems. The wallets have magic capacity to hold so much rupee energy. This is why a new wallet is so difficult to come by, instead of just getting, uh, a big bag. Bomb bags, on the other hand, bug me.

Rupees only look the same size; some of the higher value gems are clearly much, much larger, like the orange or silver ones. The green, blue, and red rupees just look the same size so players can actually see them. Bomb bags? They need to be waterproof, heatproof, and able to close. It makes sense that a bomb bag can only hold so many at once.

I think OoT states that Bomb Bags are made of Dodongo stomachs, which makes sense as the games routinely show that Dodongos are capable of surviving eating bombs.

The wallet is not actually a wallet, but a rechargeable debit card with an upper limit. Rupees are not money per se, but data crystals that code for different amounts of money.

Rupoors are even worse. Link touches one and money magically vanishes from his wallet? If he has to actually put them in his wallet for them to take effect, then why does he put them in there?

Other Links who aren't Link

Hmm... I have to wonder. Are there other boys named Link in Hyrule at any given time? I would assume that it was a popular boys name do to it being the name of the Legendary Hero(tm).

Did you ever go to the Stock Pot Inn and tell Anju you had a reservation? Didn't it strike you as odd that you just HAPPENED to have a reservation? Well, wait around for a while and you'll see a Goron who shares the same name as Link come in. The same one from Ocarina Of Time.

The Goron in Ocarina of Time was named after Link though.

But this game is Majora's Mask set in an entirely different world, not Ocarina of Time.

Perhaps you can travel between Termina and Hyrule? Maybe they're just different continents or regions?

It's wrong anyway. The Goron Link from Ocarina of Time was a child seven years into the future; depending on how Gorons age, it's safe to assume that he is, at most, an infant during Majora's Mask.

It doesn't really matter what age they were in Hyrule; a lot of the characters are parallels to Ocarina of Time characters, doubtless of age. We have both adult Malon and child Malon in the same place, just as sisters, as well as an adult Ruto.

Most people probably don't know that the hero's name was Link. A lot of stories seem to be arbitrarily kept within the Royal Family, whereas others pass into myth and legend and become convoluted. The only reason there's always a Zelda is because every Hylian princess is named Zelda, for reasons explained in Zelda II: Link's Adventure.

You are allowed to name Link. Link is the accepted name, but it's plenty conceivable that you name them different names.

Equipment weight

OK, through the magic of Hammerspace and A Wizard Did It, I have come to accept the fact that Link carries dozens of weapons and tools with him at all times, apparently behind his shield. But what bothers me is this: why is the Ball and Chain from Twilight Princess only heavy if Link carries it in his hands? Why doesn't it weigh him down when it's hanging from his back? Why can he run as fast as he usually does as soon as the weight of the Ball and Chain is not put down but simply transferred to another part of his person? Why, why, why!!?

Bag of Holding, or whatever they call it in Hyrule. Alternatively, magically-shrinking items. At the heart of it, though, it's probably a gameplay thing; being forced to move at that speed all the time would suck.

Explained quite handily at the beginning when Midna is with Wolf Link; she "holds onto" his sword and shield by zapping it into Hammer Space, and gives them back when he can use them. Its no real stretch to say she does that with all of his tools.

Yes, TP basically Handwaves this away by Midna being able to hold onto all his stuff. But in all the other games, the problem that bothers me is... why are the iron boots only heavy when you're wearing them? How does THAT work? and how are they levitating when you get them from the chest ("da da da daaaa, You have the Iron boots; they're very heavy, but for now let's just look at them float and spin above your hands!")

Well, carrying something on your back or whatever is probably easier than carrying it with your feet. Link's feet were made for running; his strength is more upper-body, I guess. As for the floatiness...chest magic.

Found money

It bugs me that Link can find so many rupees in the grass and on the bottom of/in stones. It's said in some games that the fairies leave rupees in the grass for the Hylians, but if they don't steal them, why doesn't Link upset the economy by the flood of thousands (or even tens of thousands) of rupees that on may collect in each game with enough scavenging. And if it's rupees that people dropped, why do the people not care that they dropped so many, and why there are rupees on the ground even where people supposedly never go? If the rupees are grown inside the grass, then the inflation question also arises.

That is the economic purpose of monster raids. Instead of a mint, money is inserted into the system via Minish placing of rupees under grass and rocks (where they get it, nobody knows. Maybe they steal them from monsters?) Monsters raid fairly regularly- monsters are common even in times and places Ganon is not active- and as such their economic role is the removal of rupees from circulation via placing it in a hoard somewhere. Therefore, no inflation occurs, as for every rupee Link places into the system from monsters, the Minish can simply place one less, and his taking rupees from the grass adds no more money into the system than if he never got involved.

Five Words: Hyrule Bureau of Land Management. Overgrown grass and bushes are a fire hazard, so the government pays Link for every bush he cuts down. He also removes rocks/boulders from common pathways and knocks dead branches out of trees (note: landslides are common due to the inordinate number of boulders found). Links been saving Hyrule from devastating wildfires for years, now. The only reason the game shows the rupees on screen is because it would be too boring to run back to the town/castle.

Even if Link spends a few thousand rupees on every adventure, it won't do that much to the economy of Hyrule, much like a few lucky sods during the gold rush didn't suddenly tank the U.S. economy despite also essentially making money from scratch. You need A LOT of previously unacessed wealth in order to do anything semi-permanent to an economy.

You don't think that Ganondorf's activities would have a much larger impact on Hyrule's economy? Pretty sure that the Hero's meagre collection pales in comparison.

Time travel mechanics

Virtually whenever time travel comes up, the mechanics behind it change. The worst example is Oracle of Ages, in which it seems every plot point introduces a new way for time travel to work. Magic A Is Magic A?

The games with time travel were OOT, MM, OOA, and TP. One of the worst examples is when you come upon a locked door with an unreachable switch in the past, go to the future, flip the switch, and return to the past. Where the door is now unlocked. Somehow. At some point in OOA, you come upon Symmetry City, which is in ruins. So you go back in time and find that the city is collapsing due to an artifact called the tuni nut being damaged. Once you fix it and return to the present, the entire city is in pristine condition... But in OOT, changes made to the past are seen in the future even "before" you make them, so if there was a consistent logic, Symmetry City should have been fine when you got there.

Some changes in OOT only occur after you initate them in the past (for example, the floating plants that sprout from the magic beans) while others are present from the get go. There is clearly no attempt to keep the mechanics straight and they just go with whatever provides the better gameplay/plot.

OOT: The sword needed to have an adult wielder, so it sealed Link away for seven years. Putting the sword back acts like it had never been drawn. MM, a previously useless song has a more powerful effect to go back in time in an alternate dimension. OOA a harp is given that power, although some functions are circumstantial. TP only features one instance of time travel, and that's better explained as it being a memory of the temple.

When Nayru wrote the laws of the Universe, she didn't think to write anything about how Time Travel works, assuming that it'd never come up. As a result, she's had to scroll something into the margins every time someone tries it to prevent a the universe from generate Blue Screen of Death error message; she tends to be rushed and more focused on other matters, so she isn't as constant with it as she was with, say, gravity or the electromagnetic spectrum.

Majora's Mask involved a goddess of time who may not have been related Hyrule's Triforce, given that the game took place in Termina.

In Ocarina of Time, some things must be started in the past first, before appearing in the future, while others are self-starting (such as the song of storms, and the associated effect on the well). In Majora's Mask, some things that Link does remains done after travelling back in time, while others reset. They're basically the same disparities, which leads one to assume that they can be explained. Perhaps it's this simple: magical causes propagate, mundane ones must be triggered. Which also explains the Symmetry City issue, as the magical cause was the one creating the problem.

Goriyas and Lynels

Whatever happened to Goriyas and Lynels? Sure, they were in the NES games. Sure, they had a brief resurgence as critters on the Game Boy-era games. But there's some variety of Octorok miniboss in every other Zelda game. Keese, Moblins, Stalfos, and Darknuts are everywhere. Heck, Tektites and Leevers make regular appearances. Would it be that huge a hurdle to give Goriya and Lynel their gloriously 3-D due?

To be fair, the only logical outcome would be pure player rapage.

Invincible cuccos

If the cucco are such invincible fighting Nightmare Fuel chickens, why don't the villagers use the cucco to kill the monsters? They've quite clearly seen cucco massacare Link.

Isn't it obvious? Cuckoos are devil spawns. They only attack those of pure heart.

Cucco only attack in self defense, and only after repeated hits, so maybe it is too hard to get the monster to bring the cuccos upon themselves?

Which would mean that the Triforce of Courage should actually be called "Triforce of Savyness". It's not really courage to do all this stuff, if he knows of his own "invincibility".

It's still courage if he risks his own life, even if he will reincarnate, to save the rest of the people from being stuck inderr Ganon's reign of terror until a new him comes back.

Wow, this went from the simple question why cuccos aren't used as monster-defense to a discussion about Link's reincarnation-cycle...

And considering Link doesn't reincarnate, it's really a pointless argument. And don't even start with me- I've gone through the entire script in the series looking for the tiniest references to any reincarnation. There are three, two of which is Tingle's claims to a reincarnated fairy, and the last one is the rumor about Kaepora Gaebora being the reincarnation of an ancient sage. So we literally have only ONE reincarnation in the entire series- and even then it's a rumor, not a fact in the game itself. Shortly put, the triforce trio do not reincarnate.

Ganondorf seemed to be under the impression that TWW Link was the reincarnation of OoT Link.

It may not be outright said, but given that the Links all act exactly the same, wear the very same outfit which, judging from Twilight Princess is literally a part of their soulnote When Link recovered from his Baleful Polymorph, his body spontaneously generated the Link Outfit as if it is the outfit his soul most associates with, his subconscious mental image, all have the same triforce affinity and frequently are born with the bloody thing in their hands (see: Twilight Princess, Oracle Games), all share near-identical talents, and have near-identical physical features, it isn't a very difficult to reach conclusion that there's some sort of connection.

The only exception is the Child Timeline, where after the original Ganon's death (per 'Twilight Princess') a new Ganondorf (who's also a Gerudo, but with a different backstory) is born and becomes the villain of 'Four Swords Adventures'.

Ugh...let me just finish this by saying they don't use the Cuccos to attack the monsters because they only attack the person who attacked them in the first place. The Cuccos don't give a shit about monsters.

Friendly fire, they would butcher the monsters then would turn on the villagers and AUGH CUCCO OF DEATH RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.

Playable Zelda

When the hell is Nintendo going to let us play as Zelda (the CD-i don't count)? It's HER Legend, after all. Even Princess Peach got her own game where she had to save Mario.

First, we need Zelda-Horserace. With Ganondorf in the rooster. Then Zelda Golf, Zelda Tennis, Doctor Zelda... THAT'S when we get to Super Princess Zelda! XD

Zelda's my favorite character, but if I ever see her have to rescue Link, I'll break my Wiimote. Honestly, I think they should team up a la Elika and the Prince. Just let her be playable.

Possibly Spirit Tracks, if you don't mind dead Zelda inhabiting an armor as a Mickey- or Kafei-ish Backup Link.

Zelda bible

The fact that Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed the existence of a huge file that documents all of the Zelda chronology but refuse to release it to the public. Why, my masters, why?!

Maybe they're waiting until Zelda Wii (or Zelda Wii 2) is released, so they don't give too much away before they get into the GaidenGames again. Or is that just wishful thinking?

Or they're trolling.

Most likely, they're well aware how obsessive the nerds can get about finding continuity, let alone sticking to it. As long as the document is secret, they can change it however they like to fit something new into continuity; if we'd seen it, we'd protest too much to let them do that, restricting them creatively a bit.

Before Stop N Swop was released publically in X-box 360's ports of Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, Rare had a field day with taunting rareware nerds (especially those of Rare Witch Project) of what could Stop N Swop be intended for by repeatedly dangling eggs and ice blocks sculpted in the shape of keys carrots on sticks and nabbing it away with reasons like "we tried to give you the solutions, but you thought we were trolls and flamed us too much. You lose." This continued before the final reveal due to the sheer reaction it sparks at any moment "Stop N Swop" and "answers" are in the same sentence, so Rare poked at it with more fake clues and references. I wouldn't be surprised that with heated debates for the time line, Sheik's gender and a handful of other things, this is the same case here (minus the "lol, let's pose as trolls and then blame the nerds when we bail out with our timeline for teh evulz" attitude).

The official timeline has, as of this posting, been released. You can see it on Zelda Dungeon.

Link and guns

What is with the fandom's hatred of the idea of Link using guns? Honestly? I don't even mean modern-day rifles, I'm talking revolutionary style pistols. The ones that ain't all that accurate. I mean, it wouldn't take much to balance them vs. the Bow and Arrow if you must. (Bow and Arrow only use arrows for ammo, but the pistol has to be reloaded after every shot and it takes up a bomb and a deku seed or some other bullet-like projectile). I mean, really!

Because it would shift the whole gameplay from Puzzle- and swordplay-based Action adventure to... shooting stuff all the time. The sword and the puzzles are the CORE of Zelda, the only thing that has never changed in any way. If you give Link another, potentially primary weapon, it... it just wouldn't be Zelda anymore.

It would not! It would shift it from Puzzle and Swordplay-based action adventure to a Puzzle Gun-based action adventure! Your paranoid response is why I asked my question. And no, the core of Zelda is the Adventure and Puzzles. The sword is just a means to an end. Besides! If it was properly balanced, it wouldn't really be that much stronger than the bow and arrow! (like having it do more damage but have a shorter range...or have it be just like the bow, just using bombs as ammo or something). And what do you mean it wouldn't be Zelda anymore? It'd still have Link! It'd still have Princess Zelda! It would have Gorons and Zora! It'd even have those dungeons we love so much! It would still be Zelda...fanboy.

I wouldn't presume to say Zelda follows a "historically" accurate depiction of that kind of setting, but introducing a pistol would be fairly blatant Anachronism Stew. Simply put, pistols belong in Zelda about as much as they do in Mario. And yeah, swords play a major role in the story (OoT, TP, FS, etc.), so they're not means to an end; they're actual plot devices. As for the shorter range/more damage thing, old pistols may be less accurate, but the bullet isn't just going to drop suddenly before it goes far enough to do whatever the bow and arrow can. There's no real way to balance a gun in comparison to more "medieval" weaponry (history can attest to that), but overall, it just doesn't really fit with the premise of Zelda. Then again, introducing steamboats and trains seems to show they may head towards a more industrial setting, but as it stands, it's just kind of a...an Element Dissonance, or something.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! I never said anything about it replacing the Master Sword! It's just that with the Bow&Arrow, we fire off arrows so fast we might as well be using a machine guns with how fast they go. I'm just saying it wouldn't be that hard to balance guns out if they were to replace the Bow&Arrow (small ammo pouches, having to reload after every shot, ect. ect.) But I do say a different enviroment to play around in would be nice.

Through the years, Link has been definitely established as the "elven warrior" archetype. Could you imagine Legolas using a rifle instead of his bow? It just doesn't gel with who he is as a character. The man barely has any personality as it is, at least let him keep his bow and arrows!

Because introducing guns would change the gameplay. You introduce one gun, then people will want a machine gun, then a bazooka. That's not what Zelda is about. You want guns, play one of the thousands of other games with guns. Zelda is straight up Swords and Sorcery adventure (key word here being swords). Guns simply have no place in the setting and archetype. You might as well ask why you don't get a sword in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Because it doesn't fit.

It's just fanboys afraid of change. Imagine if Final Fantasy forever stayed in the "middle ages" setting and never evolved. Same thing with zelda, it's restricting potential innovations. Besides, adding in crossbows, remote bombs, electricity wouldn't hurt the game and a steampunk setting could look a lot more unique.

Perhaps it could be like in Assassin's Creed 2, where the gun is largely impractical (due to its extremely loud noise, and because you have to stand still for several seconds to aim it) but very useful in some situations? So, essentially, like a regular Zelda item.

They're already inching this way with the cannons in TWW and TP, not to mention the bazooka one character in TP uses and the recurring bomb arrow combination.

Putting an old style gun—revolutionary war pistol—in the game wouldn't be too much of a game breaker. Those things take long enough to reload that it'd be more of a finishing weapon on a single enemy. In a fight against multiple enemies, the sword would still be needed. Heck, using a gun in place of a bow would be a step more difficult, as long as it was a very old style of gun. It'd be a one-shooter instead of the machine gun pace of the bow. A gun is loud, unlike a bow. There is no way you're sniping off a crowd of enemies with a pistol or rifle before they notice you and take cover. With the man-shooting artillery piece from TP, a hand-held, or pintle-mounted gun of some sort would be a logical weapon in any game that is after TP timeline-wise.

Bombs come from plants in Zelda games. Do they even have gunpowder? If they do have gunpowder, is it really widely used when regular plants and animals do the job most casual observers would see just as well? Secondly, not until the fourteenth century did guns really start earning their spot on the battlefield; until then, they were mostly inferior to bows in every way. What purpose would they be serving besides maybe giving enemies something to miss you with? Link wouldn't need one until Zelda firmly drops its middle ages aesthetic.

Redundancy, honestly. The bow and arrow is Link's iconic projectile weapon. The Slingshot's been introduced as a transitional projectile until you get the bow and arrow, and look at how poorly that's been received. Throwing in a third projectile weapon that is functionally exactly the same as the bow and the slingshot would needlessly muddy up the inventory with unused weapons that serve no purpose outside of combat; remember, Link's weapons are not just weapons. They are tools for solving puzzles, reaching new areas, etc. Zelda is as much a puzzle game as it is an action adventure, and to justify the hypothetical gun, you would need to think of something that the gun can do that the bow cannot do, but that would not make the gun seem like it's trying to overshadow the bow (because the bow is an iconic aspect of the series, and the gun is not). The slingshot gets away with it solely because you get it at the beginning of the game and can stop using it once you pick up the bow. A gun is too powerful to be a Dungeon 1 item, and too redundant to be a Dungeon 6 item.

It seems like a silly thing to request anyway. Instead of asking why the long running sword and sorcery series should introduce gun play, why not instead ask for a new series with bullets in it the next time Nintendo tries to introduce another title or series that looks to be going for swords and bows like Zelda?

This troper has always viewed the lack of technological advancement in the series despite being spread over thousands of years as being due to the heavy presence of magic in the world. Sure, we get cameras and trains in some of the later games, but those are also at the end of the timeline. If you live in a world where there is magical power strong enough to severely injure an opponent with a ball of pure energy, and that energy can also be used to augment existing tech such as the bow and arrow, why reinvent the wheel? Guns would be mostly unnecessary (the same would be true of things like advanced medicinal science when fairies and potions can solve most problems).

Changing clothes

The fact that Link changed out of his Pyjamas and into his hero's clothes right before his grandma's eyes, with the house's windows wide open. Does this boy know no shame? Also, in Twilight Princess, where did his Ordon-clothes go when he got them? Lost Forever?

As for the first, undergarments and being pre-pubescent. As for the second, considering that the hero outfit (and chainmail) was produced by the power of the triforce out of genetic/soul memory, maybe the old clothes were consumed as raw matter for the new ones?

The New Game Plus where he gets the Hero's New Clothes suggests he just puts them over his PJs.

Probably not. Link couldn't see the Hero's New Clothes himself, so even if he did somehow make himself comfortable with looking as though he's running around naked, the thought would probably occur to him that there are others who can't see the clothes as well, and thus that it would be for the best if he wears something visible to everyone, just to be safe.

Forgetting birthday

And, while we are at it, how can anyone stand up in the morning, forget about one's own birthday, then, even before anyone can remind him, walk outside, just to continue sleeping there? If that's what Link's regular days were like, before becoming a hero (sleeping, going outside, sleeping there, going inside, eating soup, sleeping, repeat), it makes me seriously wonder how he could stay awake while riding on a boat for Hours and Hours and Hours and Hours...

He could have been up late partying the night before. Bingeing on children's beer and cake.

While we never see him sleeping outside of cutscenes due to Story And Gameplay Segregation, is it too much of a stretch to assume he spends most of his time (in various islands or on the boat) sleeping? He has the King of Red Lions to keep an eye out for him while he rests, after all.

Zelda/Link shipping

Zelda x Link. Am I the only who dislikes this pairing and not a fan of Sheik x Link? I've always seen them as having a friendship, maybe family, relationship.

Same basis as 99.5% of yaoi. In the mind of most female viewers, there is only one kind of interpersonal relationship- lust love. If they're friendly towards one another, it's obviously because they're in love. If they hate each other with a passion, it's because they are secretly madly in love. If they are utterly indifferent towards one another while interacting, it's because they are hiding that they are madly in love. If they don't interact all that much, it means one of them is madly in love with the other, who doesn't know. All of the above only applies with physically attractive characters. Zelda and Link interact frequently, and Ganondorf is ugly so you can't ship him with either of them, therefore Zelda and Link must be doing it like rabbits. A lot of shipping can be described as a mix of Insane Troll Logic and When All You Have Is a Hammer.

The main protagonist being in a relationship which is relevant to the story's plot is one of the most pervasive tropes in mainstream fiction. Seriously, even if you look at action blockbusters you will usually find a love interest subplot (actual attempts at romance, on the other hand, are a bit less omnipresent). This leads many people, unconsciously or consciously, to make two assumptions about fiction in general. The first is that the main character MUST be in a relationship or at least be sexually/romantically attracted to someone; some exceptions can be made for exceptionally young characters, but the "first crush" theme is still fairly common. The second assumption is that the most important male and most important female characters' relationship is romantic unless and until proven platonic. This is really just another way of saying that the most likely love interest for any protagonist is the most important character of the opposite gender (at least in media not willing to deal with same-sex relationships). This is especially true if the love interest is on the hero's side, but Dating Catwoman also happens. Put both of them together, and presto! Link MUST have a "girlfriend" and Zelda is gonna be it until there is strong canon evidence to the contrary (and even THAT would only work for that particular Link and Zelda, considering the series we are dealing with).

I agree—I've seen plenty of people who play the games casually (of which there are many) who simply assume Zelda and Link get together. Plenty don't even realize that they are different Links and Zeldas, and feel it's on the same weird basis that Mario and Peach are. Link saves Zelda, she's a princess, you're the hero, both are attractive and young: to most people, it's a given, no Shipping involved. Besides that, OP is wrong: Zelda II, the linked Oracle games, and Spirit Tracks all have obvious relationship overtones/moments, as does OoT, to a degree. The creators are well aware of the expectations Link and Zelda get together—but the nature of the games makes it unnecessary.

When it comes to Ocarina of Time, I'd always assumed that Link ended up with Malon, as his other potential pairings all ended up as Sages (including Zelda). For Twilight Princess, I thought he ended up with Ilia. On the other hand, it seemed obvious that he ended up with Tetra in Wind Waker. I guess what I'm saying is, it seems to vary with the game, and with the person viewing it. Some will want Link and Zelda paired off every time, for the same reason as why they prefer to see two celebrities marry than a celebrity marry a regular person. I should note that there's no sign of any particular friendliness between Link and Zelda in Twilight Princess - in that game, Zelda's interest in Link seems to be completely professional, and Link just sees her as an important person.

Zelda name

If every princess of Hyrule is named Zelda, what happens if the king and queen produce a second princess?

Either they don't, and Zelda's not allowed to have a sister for some reason, Or maybe they just name her what they want, there's no tradition for a younger sister.

Alternatively, it's the Crown Princess that's named Zelda, but that's not necessarily her real name. Sorta like how the British royalty chooses a name to be King under. Or maybe any younger sisters would have 'Zelda' as a middle name, and then use it if something happens to the eldest.

So what happens if they have twin girls?

The one that pops out first gets the Zelda, same as with succession.

Makes sense, but what if something happens to prevent anyone from knowing who was born first, like the mother dies in childbirth, and the doctor/midwife who delivered them isn't able to tell which is which?

Either use magic to check, check to see if one of them has a Triforce mark on their hand, or guess and carry forwards as if there wasn't any confusion.

Alright, you win this time common sense, but I'll get you next time! NEXT TIME!!

What happens if they don't have any girls?

They just don't name anyone Zelda? That wasn't so hard.

Has it ever come to your attention that maybe, just maybe, there were Zelda games (and Princess Zeldas) that predate the sleeping Zelda II one and the "every princess named Zelda" rule? Of course that's just me.

Well, since all of the princesses are named Zelda obviously not.

Obviously so, given what the official timeline now has to say about the subject. Namely that the Sleeping Zelda was from an Era that predates an Era after Links Awakening which is towards the end of only one of the timelines (the Downfall Timeline, where Link fails to defeat Ganon), and not any other the others, and is not a part of the timeline pre-split.

Fridge Brilliance, considering that in Skyward Sword, the first game chronologically, Zelda put herself in an enchanted sleep to wait for Link to kill Demise.

From what I gathered, Link and Zelda aren't the same Link and Zelda in every game, but new Links and New Zeldas that the goddesses spawn everytime Ganondorf shows his head (Or some other great evil). Link has only been the same Link in direct Sequels (Oo T Link and MM Link, Lo Z 1 Link and Lo Z 2 Link , 4S Link and MC Link, and WW Link and PH Link), and every other time there's been a Link they were completely different Links. Same applies to Zelda.

Sheik besides Ocarina of Time

Can there be Sheiks outside of the OOT Zelda's lifetime? Apparently she was supposed to be in TP but wasn't, so I suppose she can be.

See: Legacy Character (though the whole split timeline thing does muddle things). The Zelda is different, so why wouldn't the Sheik?

And..? In WW she was "Tetra" but that is a somewhat different timeline.

Well, the original question was whether or not there could be a Sheik outside of OOT Zelda's lifetime. Since Sheik is a disguise (be it sex change or simple mask)...yeah, technically anyone could "become" Sheik.

I meant Zelda deciding to become her, but okay.

There can be a "Sheik" outside OoT in the same way that a red-haired woman who likes to sing could be named "Malon" (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) outside of OoT, but it wouldn't actually be her. As to whether or not it will happen, chances are fairly slim. Sheik was a thing that OoT Zelda did specifically. It's not a recurring aspect of the series and thus is no more likely to show up in a game outside OoT era than, say, Midna popping in to say hi to Wind Waker Link or the King of Red Lions showing up at Lake Hylia in a Link to the Past sequel.

Colors and goddess

So Link wears green, which is tied to Farore. Gannondorf, while not wearing red, had red hair, tying him to Din. And then we have Zelda. Red, purple, pink. Only in LTTP has she worn blue like the Goddess she gets her triforce piece from, and that was only the original version(The remake changed it to resemble her Ocarina of Time duds). Does that seem odd to all of you?

Eh, Ganondorf's hair is a stretch in and of itself, what with Ganon's skin color being usually blue or green. I'd say Link's green tunic is the only Triforce-related color symbolism.

And considering that the Triforce of Courage didn't even exist at first, it's more likely green was chosen to reflect Link's tunic and not the other way around.

Well, not exactly true, as in the Deku Tree's flashback Farore definitely had an association with the color green. Point still stands though. (Come to think of it, Din's "color" was purple in the flashback.)

I meant "at first" meaning "the first game" not first chronologically, sorry. In the first game there are the Magical Golden Triangles of Power and Wisdom, with no mention of Courage. Zelda II introduces the Triforce as we know it.

Love! For the monsters, it's love they once held, love they do held, or just simple love of fighting. Inside the chests that have them are actually sentimental items, but Link has no real use for them, so instead he is able to extract the love for that item to help himself! That's my theory, anyways.

My theory is that Heart Containers and Pieces of Heart are actually a visual representation of experience points. Clearing a dungeon is a major accomplishment worthy of an instant level, while it takes several smaller goals to add up to a similar amount of XP.

Kokori

Do Kokori die on their own? Are those shape shifting ones in WW the same ones from OOT? If so, why don't they change back? How do they even shape shift? I suppose they do die, because new ones are born with no apparent overpopulation or such, and I doubt in OOT Kokori was a "new" race.

The Koroks probably grew from the Great Deku Tree's seeds. Perhaps the Kokiri did as well, but took humanoid form because it suited them?

Humans and animals are made of meat and we haven't had any problems so far. It's probably a similar thing for Gorons. That and I kind of figured Gorons being made of rock was just a way of saying "their skin is as tough as rock" or "they are very rock-like in composition".

Bokoblin name

Why exactly are these guys◊ called Bokoblins◊ as opposed to Moblins◊? Moblins used to be the de facto Mooks of Zelda, but they seem to be marginalized by their cousins recently...

They're not being marginalized, they're just promoted to a higher-tier level of baddy! And they deserve it, too, after so many games of having nothing to do but wander arounds forests getting murdered.

It looks to me like the ones labeled Moblins have an appearance more like a hog (or boar such as Ganon). It's most noticeable in the face and nose. While the ones called Bokobins seem to have a more bulbous or goblin-shape to their face.

This. Ganon, as originally introduced, was the Moblin King. Moblins were big, beefy creatures that resembled the Big Bad himself, and even though Ganon's form and story have all changed significantly, the Moblins remain as they've always been. Bokoblins are effectively smaller, mookish Moblins that allow actual Moblins to be Elite Mooks, in order to retain their importance as enemies, as they have lost their importance to the story.

I've always presumed the females and male looked the same. Or maybe they're Asexual and have no sexes.

If they're asexual, then how do they reproduce? Rock-Mammal-Budding?

...why were you staring at a Goron's nips in the first place? Perv.

Female Link

Can a female Link reincarnation exist?

Why not? I remember some fan-fic about that...

Ooh, do eet, Nintendo!

What happens to Zelda, then? Either she stays a girl and the game gets sapphic undertones, or she becomes a demure pretty boy prince who has to be rescued by the assertive Link... on a second thought, both of those options sound awesome. Do it, Nintendo!

No, since none of the characters reincarnate. The games themselves prove this. Only one character arguably reincarnated, and that was the darn owl.

Except that Skyward Sword does provide a great deal of hints for it (IE, Hylia only has one soul to incarnate and the Chosen Hero of the Goddess thing) and the official timeline (or, at least, the translation I've seen) points out an instance of Ganondorf reincarnation explicitly, so the dismissal out of hand is much less plausible now.

As of Skyward Sword, Zelda reincarnates. Link being the Chosen Hero of the Goddess proves nothing to the effect of him reincarnating; the Goddess can choose a new hero when she needs one. The Wind Waker, meanwhile, explicitly states that Link does not reincarnate. Meanwhile, there is only one Ganon. Nowhere on the official timeline does Ganon reincarnate. There are a couple instances of Ganon's resurrection, but no actual reincarnation. End result: Zelda reincarnates, new Link, one Ganon.

The only exception is the Child Timeline, where after the original Ganon's death (per 'Twilight Princess') a new Ganondorf (who's also a Gerudo, but with a different backstory) is born and becomes the villain of 'Four Swords Adventures'. Additionally, "Zelda reincarnating" may refer only to the Skyward Sword Zelda (as the reincarnation of Goddess Hylia).

Remembering lives

Do they remember their previous "lives"? I swear Zelda's "That name sounds familiar" comment was a send-back to the previous Link.

Again, as they don't reincarnate, it's impossible for this to be the case.

Except that Skyward Sword does provide a great deal of hints for it (IE, Hylia only has one soul to incarnate and the Chosen Hero of the Goddess thing) and the official timeline (or, at least, the translation I've seen) points out an instance of Ganondorf reincarnation explicitly, so the dismissal out of hand is much less plausible now.

I remember it as being a reference to the time loop that happens at the end of OOT. It being a reference to previous Links doesn't make much sense when you remember you can change the name of every single Link, and that at the time, OOT was the earliest game chronologically.

I think you're overthinking this. Maybe she just remembers hearing the name from her dream and is shocked to see a boy standing in front of her resembling the figure in her dream, even sharing the name. That's why she was asking you all those questions.

Link almost certainly does not, for the simple reason that he wouldn't be so darn prone to falling for the evil plan if he remembered the last time around. Zelda its up in the air if she remembers; her soul, assuming she is reincarnating, is a hell of a lot more potent and powerful than Link's, after all, and the Triforce of Wisdom helps. My guess is they get some subconcious stuff, and Zelda can unlock more with time and meditation.

With Skyward Sword establishing that Zelda reincarnates, a case could potentially be made that somewhere deep in her soul, Ocarina Zelda remembers Skyward Sword Link. However, between a) the fact that Link's name is not set in stone, b) that Skyward Sword did not exist at the time of writing Ocarina, and c) the end of game timeloop cutscene, it's far more plausible that Zelda's vague sense of deja vu stems from the fact that she and Ocarina Link have been here before, both in visions of the future and in histories that never came to be.

Mute Link

One thing I noticed that whenever I either see people do fanwork with Link or otherwise do fanwork myself with Link, some people get critical in that they feel they have to remind the person that Link is mute. There are, however, other people that stated this is not the case, and that Link is silent because the players fill in the blanks, not because he's really mute. There's so much work, official or otherwise, that portray him with speaking lines that support the latter, but then there's also many people who feel they should remind people Link is mute. I felt it was the latter, especially since Wind Waker Link can make a few commands he outright shouts when teamed with Medli, and Ocarina of Time Link says his name to Zelda when they first met, but then which is really the case? (Also, note that I didn't bring up the unholy triforce or the cartoons in regards to examples of Link outright speaking. Let's let sleeping dogs lie there.)

This really, really pisses me off. Sometimes I just want to wring people by the neck and slap them around so they'll pay attention when I remind them “It's just an ARTISTIC CONCEIT highlighted by a VERY TIRED JOKE you numbskull!”

The worst part? Every 3D game has a Dialogue Tree. Some of Link's answers are rather humorous.

Multiple Zeldas

All Hyrule princesses are named "Zelda", right? Their mothers aren't of the line, so they aren't named Zelda. But what happens if their are two Zelda's? Like a (great?)grandma Zelda and a new Zelda, or if twins are born? Or like in the case of the second Zelda game.

What do you mean "what happens"? They're both named Zelda if it's the grandma/granddaughter, and in the second, they probably get different middle names.

Medieval royalty naming conventions. This is the same phenomenon that results in names like King Louie VIII. Slap a new numeral on, call her Princess Zelda XXXII, and you're good.

Zelda ages

Zelda in the Wind Waker-type series is the same age as the one in Ocarina of Time, before Link went to sleep, right? Then why does she look like teenage Zelda in cute form? Did the kingdom make all Zelda's look like the adult Zelda, after what had happened just like they did with the names?

...What?

They look about the same age. Maybe the cel-shading is throwing you off?

I meant her design. This◊ is child Zelda in OOT. This◊ is child Zelda in the cel-shaded games. This◊ is adult Zelda in OOT. Why does cell-shaded Zelda resemble adult Zelda if she's around ten?

Because that's how they drew her. Just because the games tend to use Generation Xerox design doesn't mean that there's something wrong when a character doesn't look exactly like she did previously.

But why? Wasn't her "adult" design supposed to be that way for a reason? Since she's, well, basically an adult?

They made her look like that because they decided to draw her more like she looked as an adult in OOT. There's no rule saying she has to look like she did as a kid. What does it matter?

Because the 15 year old "Adult" Zelda from OoT is the typical Zelda, and the one that actually is in this timeline? Again, Link is not 12 at the beginning of OoT- he's 8. Even the 12 year old thing is based on "Adult Link" who was the hero in their legend. Link and Zelda being 8 in OoT is confirmed, you know.

Japanese names

The Japanese names in a European setting with no apparent Japanese counterparts.

What Japanese names? Anyway, it's not specifically European, but a generic fantasy setting. How do you know that those names are not common in Hyrule?

Killing guardian monsters

In the first game, are all the monsters in the various dungeons there to guard the Triforce fragment? And if so, is it moral for Link to kill them, considering the fact that they're duly appointed champions of the princess?

It was a test of his power. C'mon; If this Hero of the Triforce wasn't up to taking out a few spiders and bats, how on earth could he defeat Ganon?

The same goes for Zelda 2, but more emphatically — the manual emphasizes repeatedly that the palaces' defenders were created by a king of Hyrule to guard the Triforce of Courage, and they're very different-looking from most of Ganon's troops (the creatures Link encounters in the overworld). This troper wonders whether Ganon's followers would really be up to the task of retrieving Link's body if he died in one of the palaces, especially the later ones that aren't even on the world map — so shouldn't dying in the last two or three palaces have given a different Game Over, to the effect of "Both of the faction leaders are dead now, congratulations, we're not even going to try to predict what comes next"?

This troper always took it as Ganon either corrupting the guardians with his power, or overwhelming them with armies of his own minions, who then guard against Link going and fiddling with the plot coupons that could bring Ganon down.

They do appear to come back to life after he leaves the dungeon and reenters.

Much like Ghodan from The Wind Waker, come to think of it. He's a test for the Hero, and he isn't really killed when you kill him. The gods make 'em tough, I guess.

This troper once read a very neat theory, in which the dungeons had been built with magical safeguards that sealed the dungeon when a "monster" was detected—also explaining the locking doors.

Are these creatures even sentient? They have very simplistic patterns of movement - they could easily be the magical equivalent of animatronics. In which case, killing them would have essentially no moral implications.

It would have made sense for them to have more than one game over screen in Zelda 2. It also would have been interesting if the guardians of Zelda 2 became allies to in future titles but, as we know, that did not happen.

Not everything a hero has to do is pleasant. Whether the monsters in the dungeons are minions of Ganon or appointed champions of the Princess, they attack on sight and kill anything that tries to reach the Triforce. Link needs the Triforce to save the Princess. That means that one way or another, he has to go through the monsters to get it. Ally or not, if they attack on sight and cannot be reasoned with, and if not getting past them means that Ganon wins, then the only option remaining is to fight.

Seasons overworld

Anyone else think Oracle of Seasons' overworld map resembles the map from the original Zelda?

That and all the bosses are the same! I understand OoS was originally going to be a remake of the original game, but those plans didn't get very far.

Yeah, that's the case. OoS was supposed to be the first game and an unmade third game (left alone because of problems with the password system) was supposed to be the second game.

The first boss is the same too, and maybe the first dungeon.

Aquamentus

So, you know the first boss of the whole series, Aquamentus? How the fuck does that battle work? His head is his weak spot, but Link can't jump. All the sprites are drawn as if from the side, but the "camera" is top down. So what do you have to do? You walk north, and hit him where his head appears to be. Is he lying down!?

The floor in the room is at an angle, but Aquamentus isn't.

Mind clarifying? I don't see how that would work. Also, what are those blocks for?

It's a visual representation in a two dimensional game. The entire game follows a top-down perspective while the sprites of characters, monsters and dungeons are from a side view perspective. The fact that you are confused at how perspective works for a dungeon's boss in a game that was made in 1986 is what is confusing me.

What I'm asking is how Link can hit Aquamentus's head without jumping, when you think about it from a more realistic perspective. Please don't say "that's just how the game is".

That's just how the game is.

Zora eggs

Zora lay eggs, right? Then why the fudge do they have womanly appendages?!

I'm amazed nobody mentioned this, in Majora's Mask, why is there a surreal landscape complete with a sun and atmosphere existing in the moon?

The same reason it has a face and is capable of crying. Termina's moon is weird.

Or maybe it's not the REAL moon, but a fake conjured up by Majora.

Then it would just be a meteor, not the moon. The moon has a face and a magic breathable landscape because Termina's moon is not our Earth moon any more than Zoras are dolphins or Gorons are armadillos.

That landscape is most likely a "spiritual" place, not a physical one. It might as well be the Moon's mind or soul or some kind of alternate dimension accessible from the moon, given how symbolic everything in it is.

If you'll notice, the features on the Moon seem to correspond to some of the characters in this game and their backstories, only twisted around slightly to represent the mask's twisted, mysterious nature - the five children all resemble the Happy Mask Salesman, the first person to uncover the mask after it was sealed away, and the four wearing the boss remains who are running and playing with each other symbolize the four Giants, and the fifth sitting by himself wearing Majora's Mask is the Skull Kid, who felt lonely and abandoned after the giants left him. We already know that Majora's Mask seems to gain power from the sadness and misery of others, most specifically those who wear it, so maybe it also adopts some of the emotions and histories of these characters themselves, as well.

Castle courtyard

Is it just me, or is the castle courtyard in OOT not directly connected to any other part of the castle?

It is merely a direct result of No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom. There are doors that lead to other parts of the castle along the way (like the area where you have to jump from Talon's boxes and after you crawl in), you just can't go in them.

Referring to the Oracle games, what's the case with Din and Nayru? Nayru is capable of pulling herself and others through time, in addition (probably) to creating places where time can be traveled through via the Harp of Ages. When Veran possesses her, it's very likely she (Veran) actually had to do something to make things run amok. Din, on the other hand, doesn't have any readily apparent abilities. Her very presence seems to be what's keeping the seasons in order, since all Onox does is lock her in a crystal before things go to Hell. Would Labrynna be any worse for wear if Nayru never existed, and what will happen to Holodrum should Din ever die?

Chaotic geography

What exactly is up with the deal with every single version of Hyrule throughout every game to have landmarks and landforms in totally different places than last time? In A Link to the Past. Death Mountain is in the far north, but in the East in Ocarina of Time and the West in the Wii version of Twilight Princess. The only theory is tectonic plate shifting, but there's no way that it could happen so subtly, in only a hundred years' time.

The Gamecube version of Twilight Princess is the canon one, so in TP Death Mountain is in the same place as in OOT. Depending on where you put ALTTP on the timeline, there's plenty of time for tectonic plate shifting.

Gorons eat rocks and usually live underground, so there's probably a lot of masssive-scale sinkhole and land-reshaping activity and lava geysers from their harvesting of rockfood which combine to cause rapid climatic shifts and force water and foliage to move around as favorable conditions change and downhill changes direction, not to mention new mountains forming from Biggoron death.

Skyward Sword makes it even worse. The Lanayru province is particularly baffling, because it used to be a lush landscape, but has become a desert full of high-tech ruins by SS, only to become the site of Lake Hylia and home of the aquatic Zoras by OOT. There is also a lake in the southern Faron Woods that is home to the Parella tribe, both of which mysteriously vanish before any of the other games.

As I see it, ignoring Twilight Princess's naming of provinces, if you rotate Skyward Sword's map slightly to the right, it fits Oo T's map fairly well. Death Mountain/Eldin Volcano in the Northeast, the Temple of Time in the North, the Lake in the South, the forest to the east, the desert to the west, and hell, the spiral shape of the Sealed Grounds is similar to Lon Lon Ranch, and fits in right there on the map. Considering a large island from the sky lands in the Sealed Grounds, after taking the Statue of the Goddess away, this could all work, and there would be minor work needed to re-greenify the area in the desert around the Temple of Time. Maybe they used Timeshift stones in the ground after cleaning out all the mines of the machinery and ancient robots.

The geography with regards to Twilight Princess gets confusing, because of the Wii reflection. Using the Wii version, if you view the LTTP map on its side, with Death Mountain on the left, then the positions of the Desert, Zora's Domain (the river's source on the LTTP map) and the Forest align remarkably well, with Lake Hylia being the only part sitting significantly out of place (the Castle is a little misplaced, but not dramatically so). Note that Kakariko Village can be moved with relative ease after a long period of time. If you use the GC version, then the locations of the Desert, Lake Hylia, the Forest, the Castle, Kakariko Village, and Death Mountain line up remarkably well, leaving only Zora's Domain and the location of the Temple of Time/Master Sword misplaced (and Snowpeak well off the map to the north-west on the OOT map).

It's dangerous to go alone

If it's "dangerous to go alone", then why doesn't the old man go with you?

Because he's an old man. If it's dangerous for a physically fit kid, it's probably even more dangerous for a hunched over old man.

Or maybe he means "You can't go alone, not without a sword".

Well think about it, according to Skyward Sword, Fi is the Master Sword. So she would be with you

The Master Sword was never used in the first two Zelda games. It only first showed up in A Link To The Past. The original game, where the old man says that line and give you a sword, gives you a wooden sword, the least powerful sword in the game.

How is a wooden sword supposed to shoot beams out of it? and how is a wooden sword supposed to beat Ganon? It can't, it has to have been the Master Sword

Have you played the first game? The sword the Old Man who specifically says "It's dangerous to go alone" gives you is NOT the Master Sword. It even specifically says "You got the wooden sword!" when you first pick that sword up from him. Plus the original game manual calls it the wooden sword. Secondly, it is also not the only sword you get in that game. After getting six lines of hearts, you can obtain the White Sword (which later games in the series imply was also the Picori Blade) from an old man in the graveyard - who says "If you can master it, you can use this," which is different from what the first Old Man who give you the wooden sword tells you. And then later on after that (I can't remember if it's based on the number of hearts you have, or if it's based on how many dungeons you've beaten) you can obtain the final sword, the Magical Sword, from an Old Man who tells you the same thing the Old Man who give you the White Sword tells you. And it's the Magical Sword that you use to beat Ganon with. (In fact, the original game manual specifically says you can only use the Magical Sword to beat Ganon, in conjunction with another item, which you discover is the Silver Arrows. Meaning the the Wooden Sword is totally ineffective against Ganon, something the Master Sword only is when it's depowered - and even then it doesn't change into wood when it is). And it doesn't matter which sword you use, as long as all your hearts are full, you can shoot sword beams from each of them - it's not a power limited to just the first sword you get, or any specific sword. Now, the Magical Sword may be the Master Sword under a different name, or it may not be - it's really just speculation. (As the art in the manual and stuff has the Magical Sword looking different in design from the Master Sword that we all know of now). But the very first sword you obtain in the game (from the "It's dangerous to go alone" Old Man) IS just a simple wooden sword, and the only thing the sword beam thing depends on is if your hearts are full, not which sword you are using. So, as far as LOZ-Link goes, his ability to make sword beams comes from some type of power within him, and not from the sword he's using.

Backing this up, also recall the end of Link to the Past: the Master Sword sleeps once more, forever. Forever. Having not made any appearances otherwise in the NES titles, and there not being any further titles down the Defeat Timeline that take place after Link to the Past and feature the Master Sword, the likelihood of the Magic Sword, which looks nothing like the Master Sword, actually being the Master Sword and contradicting Link to the Past's ending seems less probable than the two weapons just being two completely different swords.

Ponytail

What's with Zelda's ponytail in Four Swords?

It looks cute?

Bishie

Would the original Link be considered Bishōnen? The NES one. It just seems like the style, and his nose.

Why does the Deku tree speak in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe when no one else does? It doesn't seem like the main series is doing a Translation Convention, they just speak modern English. The series has a pretty medieval to 19th century feel, but I doubt Ocarina took place too far from our equivalent of medieval times

Because the Deku Tree is much, much older than anyone else we see in the game.

Wind Waker origin

The Wind Waker (the baton) doesn't really have much of a background. So the king used to use it to call on the gods' power. And?

Maybe it was JUST created (like, literally, from the King of Red Lions' mouth the second you press A), and thus, no background needed? Course, he did say he doesn't know if it still works, so it was made longer... ah well, I still play the game.

The Ocarina of Time doesn't have much of a background either. Neither did the Master Sword until Skyward Sword came along, or the Mirror of Twilight, or the Timeshift Stones, etc. etc. In the Legend of Zelda, "magic artifact of unknown origin" is sufficient enough of an explanation for a lot of different things.

And even then, both the ocarina and the Wind Waker do have more backstory than they're being accredited for here. The Wind Waker was used by the King of Hyrule to conduct the sages in the past, and it's implied that he may have held the same title as Link. Hyrule Historia hints that the Ocarina of Time was fashioned from a Timeshift Stone, meaning it was probably crafted at the time Rauru built the Temple of Time over the remains of the Sealed Grounds. The Goddess Har was used by Hylia before Link received it from Zelda, and it went on to be used by Sheik in Ocarina of Time.

First Zelda

Skyward Sword Zelda is named "Zelda"... Unless they gave her a retconned design, that's not the Sleeping Zelda. Was it ever stated that the Sleeping Zelda was the first to be named "Zelda", or was she just the one to start the tradition?

I don't recall it being explicit that she was the first Zelda, only that afterward it became tradition to name all Princesses Zelda.

Redheads

Anyone else never creeped out by the Redeads? They scared me for a while in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but never in the Zelda games. You can easily avoid them and beat them too, I only think they've attacked me once or twice.

If it makes you feel better, the Redeads in the 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time now resemble their official artwork.

Link as avatar

How is Link supposed to be your "Link" to the games, as Word of God puts it? I've never felt like I'm a part of the games, like he's an avatar of me. He's a character, and I'm playing his story as I would with any other game character.

AFAIK, he got his name in the first game. It really does feel like it's you in the original. After that, the feel was lost in some amount.

IMO, the feeling got lost when the games went 3D. Starting from then is when the games started getting more story/plot heavy and, well, you could see Link's face and his facial expressions to things for the first time. And so, less and less was he a "player avatar." But, even then, he's still the "link" the player has into the game and the world of the games, (since you play as him) so the name still fits IMO.

Zelda II Zelda

So, where is the first game's Zelda during the events of Zelda II?

Chilling at the castle, probably.

...maybe I'm misreading this Headscratcher, but wasn't she cursed to sleep forever until Link finished the story via crystals in the statues?

No. The one asleep is an ancient Zelda, not the one you rescue in the first game.

Living her life. Link rescuing Zelda from Ganon does not obligate Zelda to be attached at the hip to Link for the rest of their lives or, honestly, to even associate with him after the fact. NES1 Link and Zelda are complete strangers to each other. Maybe they became friends, maybe they became lovers, maybe they never said two words to each other once Ganon was defeated. One way or another, Link embarked on a journey in Zelda II and Zelda...didn't. That's really all there is to that.

You'd think she would pop up as her distant relative has risen from a centuries long sleep. She's the princess, so why is she not at this event? She'll have to face her eventually. The Sleeping Zelda is a princess too and probably has to live in the castle.

She hasn't risen from a centuries long sleep until Link awakens her at the end of the story. If she popped up after that, we wouldn't know because the story ended there.

Ganon lives

I'm just wondering, is Ganon from all the games the same Ganon, or does he reincarnate like Zelda and Link?

He's the same guy, kept alive by the Triforce of Power.

And Zelda and Link don't reincarnate.

Well Skyward Swordpretty much confirms that they do. Well okay, Link does - or at least his spirit does, Zelda DID - when she was originally a Goddess - and Ganondorf is a reincarnation of the hatred of an ancient demon. So reincarnation does play a part in not only Link and Zelda's existences, but apparently Ganondorf's as well. . .

Skyward Sword confirms that Zelda does. There is no confirmation that Link does, and it's explicitly stated in The Wind Waker that Link does not. As to Ganondorf, there are visual cues that imply a connection between Ganondorf and Demise, and Demise explicitly states that his hatred will live on, but the actual implications of the statement can range from "all the monsters" to "reincarnated as Ganondorf" to infinity. The Demise/Ganondorf connection is, at this time, a Schrodinger's Gun and should not be assumed one way or the other.

Whether or not Ganondorf reincarnates is inconclusive on grounds that it has never come up before. All three timelines feature a death of Ganon (Twilight Princess, The Wind Waker, NES Zelda) that has, thus far, proven to be final. There have been some threats of resurrection, but we have never before had a reincarnation of Ganondorf. That being said, the fact that Zelda's reincarnation is a wholly separate thing unrelated to the Triforce of Wisdom, and that Link does not appear to reincarnate, suggests that until stated otherwise, it should not be assumed that Ganondorf can reincarnate.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures has Ganondorf reincarnating. Rather than coming back to life as Ganon, he appears as Ganondorf and the Gerudo consider him (formerly) one of them, and then he regains his powers as Ganon.

Said Ganondorf appears in the Child Link Timeline, after the death of the original. As such, Ganon specifically reincarnated (as opposed to being resurrected, like in the Downfall Timeline) in at least one timeline.

Timeline

Is there really a universal time-line? Some say Yes, and some say No. Here is my question. SHOULD there be a universal time-line?

There shouldn't be, because not having one would give Nintendo more creative freedom. On the other hand, having one would satisfy almost all of the players. It boils down to sheer opinion.

The book Hyrule Historia gives what is apparently an official timeline. It's only available in Japan at the moment, but you can see the order of the games here.

Scabbard

It's probably stupid to be bothered by this, but where does the Master Sword's scabbard come from? It's always got the same (rather intricate) design on it, so it's not like the Hero of fill-in-the-blank just used his old scabbard, but the Master Sword is obtained by pulling it out of the Pedestal of Time, so it's obvious that the scabbard didn't necessarily come with the sword. If it's just laying nearby that seems awfully disrespectful, even if the scabbard itself doesn't have any power.

Remember that this is a magic sword that can travel through time, among other things. It can probably generate a scabbard in the same way Link gets his trademark garb in Twilight Princess, or even transform the old scabbard.

MM Bunny hood

So in Majora's Mask, you can get the Bunny Hood essentially first thing after restoring your human form. It doubles your walking speed while it's equipped and is generally a mask you should only not be wearing because you need a different mask at the moment. It easily ranks among the top five best features of the game. So why does it not return in later 3D Zeldas or at least have an equivalent that does the same thing?

It may have something to do with loading speed. Cartridges are much, much faster than discs, so when everyone switched to discs for storage space, we had to deal with loading screens. Now, Nintendo tries to keeps loading screens away from Zelda, so I assume there's some Dynamic Loading going on. The Bunny Hood could go faster than the game could load, so Nintendo didn't stick it back in. Either the sprinting in Skyward Sword doesn't go that fast, or Nintendo's gotten better at streaming.

Another explanation would be that three of the 3D games that came out after Majora's Mask - The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks all adopted overworlds with only a single means of exploring them, through boats and a train, and so the areas that were explorable on foot were much smaller and didn't take as much time to traverse. Meanwhile, the 3 other games that came out - Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, and A Link Between Worlds all featured mechanics that were comparable to the Bunny Hood: the ability to run continuously fast as a wolf, the dashing mechanic, and the reemergence of the Pegasus Boots. Also, even with the inclusion of Epona in Majora's Mask, the implementation of the time limit meant it would be important to be able to move quickly in areas where you couldn't ride her, so the Bunny Hood would've been vital in this regard.

Hyrule technology

Why does the average technology level of Hyrule seem to go down over time? Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess both provide evidence of highly-advanced societies from the past, but all knowledge of their technology has vanished. Additionally, SS is the earliest game in the series chronologically, and yet its modern civilization is more advanced than most of the ones in games placed later in the timeline.

Well, it depends on where you put Twilight Princess; but I suppose you can argue that after the Great War in Ocarina of Time's backstory, they could have destroyed all the technology, and deemed it unsafe to use. Hyrule could have evolved into a very technological country, but something could have happened to seriously set them back.

Ganondorf woobie

Am I the only one who feels bad for Ganondorf now? He's the reincarnation of the evil demon king in Skyward Sword, and it's practically his life's purpose to go after the triforce, and be ultimately thwarted by Zelda and Link in the future. It's his inescapable fate, which really sucks. I know he's probably not aware of it, but seriously. That's a pretty crappy destiny. it makes me wonder how Ganon would've turned out if he wasn't the reincarnation of the Demon King...

To be fair, Ganondorf still made the choices that he made out of his own free will; during Wind Waker, he tragically recounts how his own jealousy of Hyrule made his quest for the Triforce seep into Green-Eyed Monster territory. I don't want Ganondorf's motivations to cease being his own; Demise's curse of his hatred being incarnated in Ganondorf being the one and only source of Ganondorf's villainy would cheapen his character in my opinion. I would like it better if Demise's curse on Ganondorf explained the origin of Ganondorf's demon form Ganon as a personification of that evil.

I agree and think there's evidence to support this. Zelda had no idea or memory of her previous life as the Goddess Hylia. It was only though being guided by Impa around to the temples and praying did she regain the memory of her previous life. Before then, all the choices she made were of her own desires and life experience, and she even tells Link that, even though she is Hylia reborn she is still "his Zelda." So even though Ganondorf (or just his Ganon pig-form) is an incarnation of Demise's hatred, Ganondorf still had the free will to do the things he did and make the choices he did, just as Zelda did when she had no idea about her previous life/incarnation. And going forward from that, I don't think any of the big three who are reincarnated - meaning Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf/Ganon - have any idea whatsoever of their previous lives when they are reborn into a new one, just as Zelda had no idea at the start of Skyward Sword that she was a goddess reborn, and so still make their own life choices and decisions - curse or no curse.

Goddesses helping sister

Triforce aside, why didn't Din, Nayru, or Farore help their sister, Hylia? She had to give up being a goddess!

Hylia wasn't their sister - she was just the one they entrusted with protecting the Triforce and the people of the world they created. Heck, for all we know, Din, Nayru, and Farore create Hylia themselves - which would actually make her more akin to their daughter. Anyway, her job was to protect the Triforce, and giving up her immortal goddess nature was part of her plan to continue trying to do that. So maybe they felt like they didn't need to interfere.

Also, they left, and we have no idea where they went. It's entirely possible that they have no idea about the shenanigans that have been going on while they're out.

Thanks, I now have a mental image of Din, Nayru, and Farore showing up in the middle of a clash between Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf, and the goddesses having "WTF?" expressions upon witnessing the carnage.

Tetraforce

What does actually having four goddesses mean for the tetraforce theory?

Nothing. I think it's clear Hylia was not on the same level as Din, Nayru, and Farore, who in Skyward Sword were specifically called the "old gods", while Hylia was called "Her Grace" and just entrusted to protect the Triforce and the people of the land by the "old gods." Meaning she was, compared to Din, Nayru, and Farore, a "lesser" god in relation to them. As far as other deities of Hyrule go, Hylia would probably rank above them all, second only to Din, Nayru, and Farore, but not one of them.

The Official Timeline

A lot of people are going to say this, but... the official timeline. The three-way split makes sense when you think about it, but putting Four Swords Adventures after Twilight Princess? OK, to be fair, Ganondorf did promise to return at the end of TP, but wasn't the trident he stole in Adventures supposed to be the one he wielded in the original games? The layout of Hyrule in Four Swords looks NOTHING like the layout of Hyrule in Twilight Princess, and don't even get me started on Vaati and the Four Sword. It's worse than Metroid and the Prime Trilogy.

The FSA Trident is a giant black trident with a red gem at the center, while the ALTTP Trident is a generic white-bone trident with a skull at the center. I believe that they are different tridents altogether. Even if you were to believe that they may be the same trident wielded by Ganon, FSA Ganon is not the same Ganondorf of TP. According to Hyrule Historia, after TP Ganondorf died, he was reincarnated into a new Ganondorf several hundred years later. Thus it is reasonable to assume that any dark artifacts that the original Ganon had were sealed away so that no one could use them again. The layout of Hyrule is always changing and inconsistent in every game, even Twilight Princess Hyrule had some inconsistence with Ocarina of Time such as the location of the Temple of Time. As for Vaati and the Four Swords, their story happened long before the timeline split, so it's reasonable to assume they exist in all three of the timelines and it just so happens that Ganondorf intentionally released Vaati on the Child Timeline.

Ocarina Link

Just to make sure, OoT Link is the Hero of Time who is also the Hero's Shade in the Child (MM branch) timeline, WW Link is Hero of the Winds in the Adult timeline. The TP Link is a direct descendant of OoT Link (possibly) while WW Link is [[spoiler:not, but seeks and ultimately gets the Triforce of Courage to prove he can be like OoT. In effect, OoT Link is the considered the strongest then?

Cause of split

How does the whole Adult and Child timelines thing work? What caused the split or whatever it is that made the two exist?

The split was caused by Zelda sending Link back at the end of the game—it resulted in the Adult timeline (where Link defeated Ganon after his 7-year reign, then simply ceased to exist), and the Child timeline (where Ganondorf was stopped before he could even stage his coup, and Link lived out the remainder of his life).

Okay, but wouldn't stopping Ganondorf's reign before it began cause the Adult timeline to cease existing? I know the flow of time and time travel in these games are very loose, but still.

That's why it's a split timeline. There's two of them. Whatever Zelda did, the adult timeline spun off into a separate line because apparently that's how time travel worked in that game.

Spirit Tracks world

Does the world in Spirit Tracks have a name? New Hyrule? Neo Hyrule? If it's not mentioned in the game what is the fan consensus?

I'm pretty sure it's called New Hyrule somewhere in the game.

It's called only "Hyrule" in-game. The fans usually call it New Hyrule to avoid confusion with the old kingdom.

Timeline alternate selves

Do some of the characters appearing in the Child timeline (Niko, Linebeck, etc.) also exist somewhere in the Adult timeline and vice-versa, albeit living completely different lives (they wouldn't be sailors because Hyrule was never flooded, etc.), or does Link returning to the past prevent them from even being born? Wouldn't their ancestors exist in both timelines anyway?

The ancestors still exist, but due to living in different circumstances, they marry different people and thus produce different children, or, if they do marry the same person, conceive at a different time and thus conceive a different child. It's Chaos Theory.

Also, the branch where Niko and Linebeck exist is the adult branch, not the child one.

Epona in child timeline

In OOT, child Link can't ride Epona because she's too young to carry him and he has to wait for both of them to grow up. Then, in MM, they're both young but he can ride her with no problem. Assuming very little time has passed since the ending of OOT, doesn't it sound weird?

I think child Link can't ride Epona in OOT because she still belongs to Lon Lon Ranch. Link might have borrowed her from Malon before MM begins.

Triforce created whole

In the story the Great Deku Tree tells in OOT, the Triforce is created whole and unseparated. BUT, in SS the Triforce begins separated into its constituent three pieces. Was the cutscene just for illustrative purposes, or are we to assume Hylia did something to it before SS?

Given that the three pieces were being stored in the same dungeon, it's fairly safe to assume that Hylia broke it up temporarily for the sake of testing/training the hero a bit more.

Vaati timeline

The fact that, according to the official timeline, Vaati comes before Ganon(dorf). Minish Cap is arguably the first game after Skyward Sword and Demise's curse, so Vaati should be the first manifestation of his hate, right? Am I the only one who finds it a little underwhelming? At least Ganon (and later in the adult timeline, Malladus) is clearly connected to Demise. But Vaati?

Well, the curse's main purpose is to spite Link and Zelda. Here was a Link and Zelda, all happy-like, so he quickly made this one Minish dude lust after the kickass Force Gem inside of Zelda without incarnating himself. Or if Vaati is a direct incarnation rather than an otherwise normal guy being influenced, maybe he just wanted to be bishounen after thousands of years as a Demon King? Some have also speculated that Vaati's a reincarnation of Ghirahim rather than Demise, but there's little evidence for that.

Key point: Demise's hatred, not Demise himself. Demise's hatred is not a conscious, tangible thing. It's not like Demise himself reincarnated into the form of Ganondorf. What, exactly, Demise's curse actually means can be speculated endlessly. Visual cues imply that Demise has a very strong connection to Ganondorf, but there is no confirmation what this connection actually is and, again, "hatred" is not a conscious, living thing, and Demise himself didn't create anyone or anything; as it stands now, Demise sleeps imprisoned within the Master Sword with Fi forever, until a transitional title suggests otherwise. End result: while Demise did not create Vaati or Ganondorf, there is the possibility that the curse of his hatred haunting the reincarnating Goddess Hylia and her Chosen Hero (who may or may not reincarnate but Wind Waker suggests no) may have had a hand in influencing them in some way, shape, or form. Yes, that is an extremely vague and unsatisfying answer, but the curse didn't actually give a lot of information to go off.

Can Demise's hatred have more than one reincarnation at once? After all, Four Swords Adventures included both Vaati and Ganon...

One thing that was always somewhat strange about Vaati is the fact that all the monsters in the world (including sapient creatures like Moblins) obeyed the guy who was, basically, nothing more than a random sorcerer (and a former Minish at that). Demise's curse, however, easily explains it - it gifts the villain who opposes the Hero and the Princess with the powers of a Demon King (specifically, control over the Moblin hordes). Considering that Vaati (in his later forms) is referred to as a "demon god" in Japanese versions, perhaps he, like Ganon, was not born as a Demon King, but 'became one' in his pursuit of power?

Kokiri in Twilight Princess

What happened to the Kokiri in Twilight Princess?

Many believe they became the monkeys.

They transformed into monkeys? They have that power? Can they transform back?

All living things have the ability to transform into other things over the course of hundreds of years. It's called evolution.

Zelda evolution is a bit different from real world evolution. It takes place over a much shorter period of time and usually involves a minor deity or two; in the case of the Kokiri, the Great Deku Tree is the catalyst. In the Wind Waker, they've turned into Koroks, but the absence of the Deku Tree in Twilight Princess might imply the monkeys are the original form of the Kokiri.

Hylians

What are Hylians? Fans often think of them as a separate race from humans, yet most if not all non-humans in the series tend to think otherwise. What is it that's so special about Hylians aside from the Pointy Ears? Apparently it's because they are able to listen to the gods, and...that's about it. No special powers, long lifespans, or anything else too different from ordinary humans. So how did they come to be?

Well, Link does have special powers, like warping through time with an ocarina, teleporting, and using magic spells like Din's Fire. The ocarina and the spells are actually given to him, but it's likely that a non-Hylian wouldn't be able to use them. And Hylians are the descendants of the goddess Hylia anyway, so this gives them some kind of importance in-world. I think they're more like a fantasy alternate version of humans than something completely different.

Not quite. As seen in Majora's Mask, if a non-Hylian uses the Ocarina, it simply transforms into a guitar/drums/pipes. And as the people in Termina aren't 'blessed' like their Hylian counterparts but their Great Fairies can grant magic power in much the same way, it stands to reason that non-Hylians could use items like Din's Fire, especially considering you need it to enter the Shadow Temple, a Sheikah place. note Yes, there are probably other ways to light a bunch of flames at the same time, but probably not conveniently.

Yeah, but it's still Link that plays it, so the only reason why it changes shape is to fit his new form. Remember that the Ocarina is a treasure of Hyrule's Royal Family, which is Hylian. I've always figured the Great Fairies were avatars of the Goddesses that grant powers solely to the Hero to help him in his quest (what would a "normal" guy do with Farore's Wind anyway?), and those in Termina are simply a counterpart. As for the Shadow Temple needing Din's Fire to be opened, it might just be that the Sheikah, being protectors of the Royal Family, wanted to make sure that only the right people (i.e., Hylians) could enter it.

Termina is a land doomed to die. note Right there in the name.It has no gods. Thus, the Great Fairies in Termina cannot be avatars of them.

Hyrule Historia implies that the Ocarina is made of Timeshift stones. If this is true, then it seems that the Ocarina runs on Magic A Is Magic A, without intervention from the goddesses, unless the Goddess of Time works with Timeshift stones too. Also, when Skull Kid holds the Ocarina, it doesn't turn into a flute or anything, probably because Zelda only asked the Goddess of Time to watch over Link.

So, to sum this up: Timeshift stone-based artifacts will (apparently) work for anyone so long as the Goddess of Time wills it. In Hyrule where her domain is, the Ocarina will transform into something appropriate for the species no matter the individual. Elsewhere, you need a goddess that outranks her (in our case, Zelda/Hylia) to request that she watch over an individual in order to make any Timeshift stone-based device work for them.

Or, alternate, less complex idea: The Ocarina doesn't shapeshift normally, that's just an effect of the masks.

Minish in Skyloft

Right, so the canon explanation for the rupees under grass and in vases is that the Minish put them there, right? So, um... why are there rupees under the grass in Skyloft? That... doesn't even make any sense. What, were there Minish in Skyloft?

Why not? Only good, innocent children can see them, after all. Perhaps, considering Hyrule Castle hadn't been built yet, the Minish Door was kept in Skyloft and nobody noticed?

Timeline split, Links

How can there be both a timeline where Link defeats Ganon in OOT and another one where he gets killed, if there is only one Hero of Time? It's not a split timeline like the Adult and Child ones because there's no time travel involved at the end, so what gives?

Link did a lot of jumping back and forth in Oo T, remember, using a method that clearly wasn't designed for time travel (and as such can be expected to have a few bugs). I assume the "failure" timelines(s) is/are the result of those jumps - he leaves the future for the past to go to the Well, and the future he leaves becomes a Failure timeline, returning to a new one.

Assuming that he does indeed create bugs while time traveling, he'd most likely only get back to the "new" future (therefore leaving the "bugged" ones forever, unless he also splits in two thanks to the bug). The problem is, even in the "new" future's final battle he can either survive or die, but both the "victorious" and the "downfall" exist anyway. While the Child and Adult ones both exist because he leaves the future where he has won to go back to the past where he can stop Ganon, there can't possibly be a parallel timeline if he dies in the final battle (therefore making it impossible for MM, TP, WW, PH, and ST to take place). Yet...there is one. This makes Link some kind of Schrödinger's Cat.

Yes, but a context for "loses" was never given, other than "Ganondorf won and was then cast down by the Knights". It's possible that this simply meant Link left to go to the past, never returned, and the people, not being up-to-the-minute on his journey, assumed he lost.

Alternatively, because the Master Sword isn't designed to time travel, it wasn't, and was sending a copy of his consciousness back to change things — meaning every time going back left a Link in the future with no way to finish the journey and thus win.

Sheik talks about the Master Sword reversing the flow of time, so like Link slipped into a coma for 7 years, Link goes in, falls asleep, and wakes up as a kid. All of his rupees/bottles/gear is still intact. Going by your theory, Link would arrive in the same place every time (weapons, items, not withstanding) and find dozens of extra Links wandering around.

This is speculation, but it could be a side effect of Link being ripped out of the timestream to begin with, when he jumped forward seven years. The official timeline has the Defeat Timeline branching off at an earlier point than the other two, and that seems to be the only serious temporal event; it may have created a timeline where Link, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist after reaching the Master Sword. This is somewhat supposed by the backstory of Link to the Past; the Master Sword still sleeps in its pedestal undisturbed, implying that not only did Link fail to defeat Ganondorf, but he never drew the sword to begin with. With the drawing of the sword being the only catalyst for time travel that exists in the story before the other split, when Zelda sent Link back, the only way this is possible is if Link never arrived in the future at all. I think there might also be something in Link to the Past's backstory about a Hero never appearing to draw the Master Sword, but I might be wrong on that detail.

I don't understand how this is an issue. The Zelda series clearly uses the many worlds interpretation; in one universe Link won the final battle, in another parallel universe he didn't, simple as that. Unless Word of God says that the series does not use the many worlds interpretation (and I've never heard anything to that effect), there is no conflict here.

Hyrule temples between games

We already know how Hyrule's geography is inconsistent at best, with more or less subtle changes from game to game. What puzzles me the most, though, are the temples: what the heck happens to them between games? Those in OoT are clearly *not* the same ones in Twilight Princess. Well, there's still a Water Temple at the bottom of Lake Hylia, but unless the Zoras changed its whole structure (and for what reason...?), it's not the same Water Temple. I've heard that Arbiter's Grounds might be the Spirit Temple because of its location and that it was simply converted into a prison, but that's hardly the case as it looks too different and much older than the couple centuries between the two games. Same for the Forest Temple. If they're not the same temples, what happened to the "old" ones? Are they still somewhere in Hyrule? Were they replaced?

If you think OOT and TP are different, ALttP and OOT have VERY different layouts, even if the elements (Lost Woods, Death Mountain, Kakariko Village) are still there.

I think Skyward Sword established that the temples were created by Hylia as a way to hone her hero's abilities. Maybe the Links would get deja vu about the answers if the temples didn't change every generation or so?

Same Link

So ALttP Link and Oracle Link are apparently the same person as of the most recent information, with the Oracle games coming after ALttP, right? If so, why does he look significantly younger in the Oracle games? It would be one thing if it was simply just Depending on the Artist, but the official art for the Updated Re-release of ALttP is done in the same style as the Oracle games, and the apparent age difference is still there.

Maybe the Triforce wanted him to look cute so Din would dance with him?

Oracle ages

Just how old are the oracles from the Oracle games? They make a cameo in Minish Cap, which takes places thousands of years before the Oracle games...

The Oracles are avatars for the Goddesses (there was meant to be a third one, but that never came to pass), presumably they've had many avatars over the years.

One of them does explicitly have the power to travel through time.

Town names

The towns in AoL are presumed to be named after the sages from OoT, given the order of the games. But AoL takes place in the failure timeline, in which we can presume the sages were not awakened, since LttP suggests that the sages were human/Hylian (the maidens are all human). So why were the AoL towns named as they were?

Maybe the ones from OoT are named after famous people who the towns are also named after, and we just never hear about the namesakes due to the games never delving deeply into lore and never telling the names of previous sages?

Maybe the sages of Ocarina were awakened, but failed. Twilight Princess establishes that there can be different sages; the sages of Twilight Princess in the Child Timeline are strongly implied not to have been the same sages from the Adult Timeline. Perhaps in the Failure Timeline, the seven sages were awakened, but the long and bloody war with Ganon resulted in them training apprentices to replace them in the event that they did not survive the conflict. They didn't survive, the new sages took over, and the Knights of Hyrule were able to protect the new sages until they could seal Ganon away inside the Golden Realm. In this case, the towns in Adventure would be named for the original seven sages as a way of honoring them for their sacrifice that, ultimately, made Ganon's defeat possible.

The Adventure of Link takes place in the timeline in which Link was defeated during the final showdown with Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time, leading to the seven sages, which he had already awakened, to seal Ganon using what was probably a significantly weaker seal. This led to their rise to fame and the towns being named after them later.

Except in A Link to the Past, the sages' descendants are all Hylians, whereas in OoT most of the sages are non-Hylian. I think there are headscratchers on this topic in the OoT article as well. It really seems like the only explanation is that OoT was a retcon and/or the games were never intended to be part of a coherent timeline at that point.

Link design

Will they ever give Link a new design? For the last 10+ years, there has been little change in his designs. You either have Toon Link or regular Link. There have been slight hair style differences and hair color differences with the latter but they mostly all lookalike. Why not a red-headed Link or a raven haired Link? Or going back to brunette Link? Maybe a strawberry blond? Make his hair longer, give him a haircut, bring back his bangs..?

In Wind Waker, the people of Outset Island speak of a young boy (Link) defeating the evil Ganon, and give their children the clothes that the young boy wore when they reach his age. But Wind Waker takes place in the adult timeline, doesn't it?

The timeline only splits near the end of Ocarina of Time, so OoT Link starts as a child in all three.

Even the "adult" Link was only 16... But then again, WW Link is supposed to be 12 and is considered an adult, so who knows. WW is implied to take place in the very distant future, so maybe some details got warped over time?

Reforging the Kokiri sword

The Hero of Time intends to return the Kokiri Sword when he's done with it in OoT, but in MM he can have it reforged into a different sword altogether! Anyone else think that's a little dickish? Would it fit back in the chest he found it in? Could an actual Kokiri even hold it? At least he doesn't have it as the Hero's Shade, meaning he got rid of it eventually, but still...

It's clearly a different sword, or at least one that's already had to have been reforged. The MM sword has a rectangular guard with two bolts, and the OOT sword has a winged guard with a red thing (a gem?). If the game calls it the Kokiri sword (I think it does, but it's not worth it to check one of my copies of the game at the moment), it's probably because it was designed to imitate the blade-shape, weight, and balance of the Kokiri sword. Having it reforged into the Razor Sword or Gilded Sword is probably only partially making it sharper — a lot of that may be adjusting the balance so that it's easier for young teen Link to wield it than child Link (and older teen/adult Link may be able to wield it effectively as well, if the gold is more than just some strange kind of laminate that can hold an edge and is actually incorporated into the metal of the blade).

Triforce of Power in Twilight Princess

If Twilight Princess takes place in the child timeline and thus Ganondorf never reached the sacred realm, why does he have the triforce of power? Shouldn't he just have been Ganondorf and died when he was executed? Or am I looking too far into these things?

I think the current theory is that it was a 'Divine Prank', as the sages put it. Getting a Triforce piece in one timeline apparently gives it to you in the other(s).

Or maybe it's just predestination; since Ganondorf can only be killed by Link, the Triforce of Power prevented him from being killed by someone else. Also he probably didn't even need to get it, he might have been chosen by it just like the Triforce of Courage chose Link (who already had its mark on his hand at the beginning of Twilight Princess), and it conveniently activated at the right moment protecting him.

Maybe the fate of the Triforce in one timeline influences its fate on others, at least in events that involve branching. Since Link still had the Triforce of Courage when he was sent back in time, it ran the risk of causing a paradox by having two Triforces of Courage in existance at once. So Link got the child Triforce while the Adult Triforce split apart at being ripped from its owner. And since Ganon and Zelda got the other two Triforce pieces in one timeline due to the events that caused the split, they got them in the other timeline as well.

One theory is that, since Link apparently brought back the mark of the Triforce at the end of Ocarina of Time (you can see the mark on his hand on the last cutscene, and this can't be a case of the developers overlooking an aspect of his model, as young Link doesn't have a Triforce mark at any point of the game), this caused the child timeline's version of the Triforce of Courage to go to him, while the other two pieces went to their respective chosen ones to balance it out. So, Zelda and Ganon got their pieces of the Triforce, without their knowledge. When close to death, Ganon's Triforce piece activated, triggering his transformation into Ganon (you can see the start of the transformation in the "divine prank" cutscene, with a lot of parallels to the same transformation at the end of Ocarina of Time) and making the Sages resort to the Twilight Realm for banishing him.

Link's reincarnation

Okay, since this comes up a lot I thought I would elaborate on the discussion regarding Link's "reincarnation" across the series. Hyrule Historia, the book featuring the official timeline has a short manga story near the end covering the events leading up till Demise's imprisonment and the people of Hyrule being sent to the skies. The very first incarnation of Link appears in this story. Near the end of the story, this first incarnation of the hero dies after using the Master Sword to send Skyloft into the heavens. It is then that Hylia appears and blesses this first Link's spirit to forever be reincarnated should the people of the land need his help. So when Demise mentions the "Spirit of the Hero", it is meant quite literally, and every incarnation of Link logically carries this spirit with them, seeing as they do appear when the land needs them. However, each Link is also their own person, not a direct reincarnation of the first one. Hope that clears things up.

According to Mirriam-Webster, one possible definition of spirit is "a special attitude or frame of mind." It's entirely possible that the "Spirit of the Hero" is just that: His drive to fight for good and to do what's right, to protect the people he loves, and the courage to stand up against evil. EVERY Link possesses this same "spirit" by that definition, but it doesn't have to be a reincarnation of the actual soul. This extends to other heroic figures we see throughout the series as well: Zelda herself, Groose, the Resistance of Twilight Princess, and all of the others without whom Link's efforts would have failed. Hylia isn't ensuring her Hero can literally live again in the same way she does by reincarnating into Zelda, but that the memory of his courage and heroism will live on in everyone who is willing to stand up against evil.

Here's my view of the situation: Some Links are literal reincarnations of one or more others. This is pretty much canon; possibly explicitly canon, I don't recall. At least one Link is explicitly NOT a reincarnation (Wind Waker). Other Links may or may not be literal reincarnations, and y'all should go argue about each of them instead of making sweeping statements about all of the Links, mmkay?

...except that not a single Link has ever been hinted to be a reincarnation of a past one. There's no evidence at all.

Except the prequel manga for Skyward Sword, has the original Link, Hylia's knight from before Demise's first sealing, die in battle, after which Hylia, distraught, ensures that she'll be reborn as a mortal to be with him, and that they'll be reborn every time Hyrule is in danger. Link to citation on the wiki, since scans of the manga itself would be copyright infringement. Granted, the manga is always of dubious canonicity, but in this case, as a prequel, it's expanding on the series and doesn't actually contradict the contents of the game like some of the other manga. Still dubiously canonical, so you can personally dismiss it if you want, but canonical enough to fit in without much squeezing or squinting.

I was referring to the games since to me they're the only canonical parts of the story. Should the manga ever be proven as canon, things would definitely change.

Alright then. Why do people assume reincarnations to the point that that manga chapter was written? Because all the Links look exactly the same, aside from graphics style differences, outfit details, and whether the hair is brown, blonde, or sandy (or pink that one time), behave exactly the same, use the same fighting style and techniques no matter who's trained them or if they've ever held a sword before, and are frequently born with the Triforce of Courage embedded in their hand and/or a triforce shaped birthmark (leading to the assumption that the Triforce is stored in the soul and goes with Link via reincarnation, because there isn't always a Link, there'd be records from it showing if non-Links got it, and if it hovered around waiting between Links, Ganon could nab it). In Twilight Princess, the outfit literally appears out of nowhere when he's returned to his true form, despite having worn something different when he was turned into a wolf and never shown to wear anything like that in the past, as if the outfit was embedded in his soul or something. Is any of this actually stated? Nope. Is any of it hinted at? Nope. Is there any explanation given for ANY OF THIS? Nope. Thereby forcing players to come up with their own, and "it's all a coincidence" is supremely unsatisfying for a lot of people. Thus, people tend to come to one of two conclusions. 1. They're all related extremely closely, or 2. reincarnation. 1 doesn't make much sense because of the thousands of years involved (all of Hyrule is related to most of the Links by the late timescale, so degree of relation just goes back to unsatisfying coincidence), leaving people to settle on 2 as their never-stated-or-hinted-at-but-only-available-non-coincidence-explanation. Fanon, not canon, if you want to ignore the manga, but fanon based on a total absence of any canon explanation or handwave, combined with something clearly being going on to connect these dozens of identical people throughout space and time.

To summarize the above rant, and paraphrase the very same argument near the top of the page, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and several people have made comments relating to ducks in unofficial statements and related contexts, most people are going to assume that they are looking at a duck, rather than waiting for the zookeeper to come by and confirm whether or not it's really just a chicken that somebody put on a diet and dressed up funny.

Okay then, now explain why, if Link reincarnates, two different Links coexist in Twilight Princess, just to name a game you mentioned. Or why the Link in Wind Waker has no relation whatsoever to the other Links (and it's something STATED in the game, not fanon). Seriously guys, just because the different Links look similar, it doesn't mean they're the same person who reincarnates, it's merely an artifact to make the character familiar and recognizable to players, while in-game it might just be Literary Agent Hypothesis in action, where people who narrate the various Legends describe Link in a similar, iconic way. Everything else can be explained by them being the "chosen ones", protected by the Triforce of Courage, Farore, Hylia, or whatever you want. Confirmed? No. Possible? Definitely. There's no need to be so aggressive in defending what YOU think is the right explanation.

I think the problem might be you (and yes, I am well aware of the hypocrisy in such a confrontational statement); when something is responded to with "no this is wrong and has no basis in fact" on a page that more or less exists to handwave technicalities via fanwank, people get defensive; when the "no you are wrong" continues, it escalates with further aggressive defending. If you want people to have a chance of agreeing, or at least not responding to "no way" with increasingly aggressive "yes way", be diplomatic, be polite, make a token not-actually-significant concession or two. I do have theories about Twilight Princess and Wind Waker (namely, that wasn't a ghost, it was memories from a past life awakened by the familiar songs, Hero of Time having set up stones to play those songs for just such an eventuality, with the meeting being along the lines of Aang talking to Avatar Roku, and Wind Waker being that Daphnes, being the person least actually versed in the mystical, was simply wrong - or perhaps Link's soul departed that timeline due to the way it split off, and the soul remains in the Failure and Child timelines). Again, the whole point of Headscratchers is seeking answers for things that we still had questions on when canon is all said and done - there ARE ultimately no answers, which is why most responses are of the format "yes, or, alternatively, your question could be because blah blah blah" rather than "no, you are wrong, your question is obviously because yadda yadda yadda, even though neither of us has anything but circumstantial evidence, theorizing, and extrapolation to go by since canon is more concerned with telling a story and selling well than filling in every niggling background detail and some foreground cavities".

TL;dr, we're all theorizing based on inconclusive data, dealing with the "mights", the "maybes", the "perhapses", the "possiblys", the "alternativelys", etc. while here trying to fill in the holes here on Headscratchers (if we weren't, we'd be on the Triva page or the Fridge Brilliance page!), so statements that try to be conclusive rather than additive or alternative while actually shooting down another's theory of how a given ambiguity could work in favor of one's own rub people the wrong way.

If I may throw in my two cents... I don't think The Wind Waker contradicts the reincarnation theory at all, and if anything it supports it. If there isn't a single Link soul being passed around to create the chosen heroes, another chosen one should have shown up to defeat Ganon's second coming — but that didn't happen. When a hero does show up in The Wind Waker, he doesn't have the clothes embedded in his soul and he doesn't start with the Triforce of Courage — which all fits with him being The Unchosen One and not a reincarnation. These traits are unusual for the series, so it makes sense to assume he's an outlier and the other Links are reincarnations. Twilight Princess is trickier, but I would go with the theory stated above that it's a manifestation of past life memories. Heck, maybe that's the explanation for why every Link is such a good warrior — they're taught by the accumulated experiences of their past lives. But I think the bottom line is that the Zelda mythos is labyrinthine, inconsistent, and ultimately at least a little nonsensical, so getting this hung up about the details is an exercise in futility.

Link's cap

So if Minish Cap supposedly details the origin of the green cap in Link's costume... why does the cap appear in Skyloft knights' academic uniforms (including Link's green uniform, which he wears for most of the game)? Or rather, if the cap appears in the chronologically earlier Skyward Sword (currently the only game before Minish Cap), why is Minish Cap said to be the origin of the cap's inclusion in the iconic Link outfit? (Time Travel Tense Trouble is a problem for prequels, not just time travel.)

A narrative simplification, the cap almost certainly wasn't actually there, but right there in the title you have 'The LEGEND of Zelda' which makes me think that the cap might be a simplification in the legend itself, say, to help little kids follow along without asking "But what abouut the caaaaap?" because they forgot what little they ever heard about the Hero of Men.

Or perhaps Vaati wanted to make Ezlo the stylish kind of hat? If the Minish Door opens every century, a few Minish might have seen and liked the Skyloft knight's style and spread it amongst themselves. Then, when Ezlo decides Link looks wrong without a hat, he just gives him the type he was turned into because that's the kind Link looks wrong without. All speculation of course, but it makes sense to me.

Alternatively, The Minish Cap just wasn't actually intended to be an origin for the cap, people just considered it to be such. Or, it could be similar to how there were princesses named Zelda before the incident that caused all Hyrule's princesses to be named Zelda, in that Skyward Sword Link prefigured the tradition of Link having a green cap but wasn't the one who actually made it a tradition. (After all, it was part of the knight uniform...)

Different origins for the same element over the course of the series. It's just like the green garb in OoT comes from Kokiri tradition (with no connection to either SS or TMC), and the earlier games in the series never bothered to give any reason for the cap and green tunic.

Bishie villains

Why are most of the male villains nowadays constantly designed to look like girls, or act feminine? (Ghirahim and Yuga, for example)

It's just two of them. Maybe they just wanted to shake things up a little.

Immortal Ganondorf, mortal Link and Zelda

Ganon/Ganondorf seems to be immortal, while Zelda and Link constantly die and resurrect whenever Ganondorf decides to do something. How come they're not immortal like Ganondorf/Ganon? I mean, I know Ganon can be defeated, but he can also be resurrected and it's still the same Ganon: It's not like it's a new Ganon, it's the exact same one. So why can't Link and Zelda just be immortalized by their goddesses so that they're always around? Why do the goddesses just decide "Nah, let this Link and Zelda grow old and die, so we can just bring them back whenever we need to"?

Because it'd be cruel to force any of the Links or Zeldas to stick around and fight evil for eternity, instead of letting them enjoy a normal life and death after risking life and limb? And that's presuming they could make the two immortal in the first place. You could just as much argue why they the goddesses don't take away Ganondorf's immortality to solve the issue.

You're assuming that the goddesses are the ones choosing whether to make them immortal. Another option is that it's the characters themselves choosing: Link and Zelda prefer to live out their lives and die as normal (more or less) people. Ganon on the other hand refuses to die and the Triforce of Power is a potent enough artifact to make that happen.

Breaking keys

Why is it you can only use any given key on a dungeon's locked door once? What? Does the door eat the key or something?

Is Bongo Bongo still sealed in Kakariko Village's well in the child (and possibly downfall) timeline? Am I the only one who finds the implications disturbing?

Remember, he was only released because Link unsealed him from the Bottom of the Well. Also, the Kakariko Village in Twilight Princess and, implied, Four Swords Adventures, are in a different location than the Ocarina of Time Kakariko. The Old Kakariko is abandoned, on a little-used stretch of roadway. Unless Kakariko recovers almost immediately, nobody is going to be releasing Bongo-Bongo anytime soon, as shown in the fact that he still isn't released in Four Swords Adventures.

Gannon pretty much single handedly threatened the entire world. Zelda II seems to be a world where people live safely in villages without fear and while we never see them there are apparently guards running around because the roads are safe, monsters have been pushed into the forests and swamps off the beaten path. Gannon would change all that in an instant.

Boss titles

How does Link know the name and title of every boss he encounters, and why does he think it's okay to outright kill them? They might be important deities.

He most likely doesn't know their name; the player does. It's an artifact of the game, just like Link being instructed to "press A" to do stuff. As for why he kills them, it's kinda hard to reason with a huge monster that's trying to kill you and prevent you from saving the world while you're magically locked in a room, isn't it? Moreover, deities are generally benevolent and willing to help him, so it's easy for him to figure out what's a threat and what isn't.

Islands and New Hyrule

In the adult timeline Link and Tetra eventually find a new land which becomes the new Hyrule, so what happens to all the islands in the Great Sea? Would they be considered part of the new Hyrule kingdom, or a different kingdom altogether? Overseas territories maybe?

The Great Sea is located a significant distance away from New Hyrule...significant enough that the pirates had to spend many, many months looking for it. Thus, there would be no way for the royal family to make convenient contact with the islanders or exhibit any sort of authority over them. It is, however, hinted that certain characters may have immigrated to New Hyrule from the ocean, although a great majority, if not all of them, were from Phantom Hourglass, which explicitly takes place in an alternate world.

Triforce unable to grant wishes

Given that evil and suffering caused by the the wars fought over the Triforce and Ganondorf having the Triforce of Power far outweigh the good due to wishes made on the Triforce, wouldn't everything have been much better if the goddesses had made it unable to grant wishes? Or locked it away in a completely inaccessible pocket-dimension? Or both?

There is no indication that the Golden Goddesses specifically designed the Triforce with the ability to grant the wishes of those who touch it, and to be fair, it was also imbued with the power to deliberate whether a person's heart was balanced. Also, the possibility of using it to grant good wishes can be well-suited against other threats that may appear in the world - consider Demise from Skyward Sword: he sought the Triforce throughout the entire game, and thus spent the entire game without it, and yet was still so powerful that the Triforce was the only ensurable way to put an end to his plans. The importance of the Triforce to the stability of the world is cemented firmly as of A Link Between Worlds - before the game came out, I'd actually discussed with someone why the Triforce couldn't just be destroyed to stop the fighting - that making wishes to try and change it or mess with its nature may not turn out as expected.

Servants in show

Why aren't there any servants in the entire castle? One episode surrounds the idea of Link being forced to clean the castle (and him playing sick to get out of it); if there were servants who did the cleaning, the crisis for the episode could have all been avoided.

True. However, you're applying logic to a show that is clearly devoid of it.

Apply Fridge Horror for a second. Where do the minions in the CD-I games come from? Other than the Triforce Of Power, which doesn't have the requisite abilities elsewhere and is merely providing the raw energy and firepower, where would we get the material for the Evil Jar?

To be brutally honest (And to undermine the point) they gave up with Ganon's consistent attacks and moved to less targeted cities and less important castles. They just couldn't HIRE anyone because nobody wanted the job.

Reassembling the Triforce

I know the Zelda mythos is a tangled mess that changes Depending on the Writer, but is there any explanation for how reassembling the Triforce to make a wish is supposed to work? According to Ocarina of Time, the Triforce has a defense mechanism that causes it to split if it's touched by someone who doesn't have the three aspects in balance. Ganondorf's plan after observing this is to gather the bearers to one place and presumably extract the pieces like he does in The Wind Waker. But... wouldn't that just trigger the defense mechanism again? Can a reassembled Triforce grant a wish to anybody? If so, why? And even if that's the case, how would Ganondorf know? How would he know how to extract the pieces in the first place? And no, The Wind Waker doesn't provide conclusive evidence for this, since the wish is made by someone other than the main three (and it is therefore possible that he passes the "pure heart" test). Basically, what would happen if Ganon ever succeeded and made a wish on a reassembled Triforce?

He'd get his wish. The defense mechanism is only for when you try to grab the whole thing in the Sacred Realm. Afterward, collecting the other three pieces is a sort of test — ideally, you've in the process of collecting them gained balance between the three (which Link does).

So the defense mechanism only works once? That sounds like a terrible idea; it's just asking for a power-hungry psycho to exploit the loophole and cause chaos. The goddesses clearly care very deeply about only certain people being allowed to use the power, so why bother with the defense mechanism in the first place if it can be bypassed like that? If the point of the split is to encourage the bearers to achieve spiritual enlightenment, why not hard-code that in and have it keep splitting until they do? I also don't see how tracking down the other two bearers and beating them to bloody pulps helps you understand their virtues.

Because the Goddesses didn't spend all their time working out every single possible event that could possibly lead to someone getting the Triforce. Gods rarely do that sort of thing. If they did, there wouldn't be a story. Don't expect anyone to do everything perfectly the first time.

But they clearly considered what would happen if someone got it, given the initial defense mechanism; why didn't they hard-code that into the Triforce itself for all eventualities? That doesn't seem like it'd require any special effort. And reforging the Triforce definitely seems like a planned, intended method, given how easily Ganondorf does it in The Wind Waker (it's almost as if it happens automatically). It doesn't make sense to me that that would be the weird, buggy possibility the gods didn't predict.

It's possible the defense mechanism is a mechanism of the Sacred Realm rather than of the Triforce itself. Just because they're gods, don't assume that means they can do anything they want. Clearly the nature of things is such that the gods have rules to play by, too.

That does sound like a reasonable explanation, since the only instance of splitting is when Ganondorf gets it in the Sacred Realm... I guess the goddesses never intended for it to be taken out of its holding place, which is where the bugs come in. There is still the inconsistency of how it doesn't split when Ganondorf enters the Sacred Realm in A Link to the Past, though.

How is Ganon alive in the first The Legend of Zelda?

According to the official timeline, the Imprisoning War branch goes ALttP -> Oracle games -> Link's Awakening -> The Legend of Zelda. But... Ganon was Killed Off for Real in ALttP, because he didn't have the Triforce of Power. In the Oracle games Twinrova tried to resurrect him, but failed. So how is he around some undetermined amount of time later?

A Wizard Did It. No, really. Just because Twinrova's attempt to resurrect him failed doesn't mean that some other servant might have successfully done so later. Either that, or he reincarnated on his own later. He is the mortal incarnation of Demise's hatred, after all.

According to Link's Adventure, sprinkling Link's blood on the ashes would revive Ganon. Possibly some spy of Ganon's snuck up to an elderly Link from LTTP and got some blood from him.

Hm, I suppose so. The existence of resurrection magic in a setting really makes for some easy Handwaves, doesn't it? I've also heard that the Ganon in Four Swords Adventures is actually a completely different Ganon, so this could be another example of that.

It actually gets even weirder than that..A Link Between Worlds is also a continuation of events that occurred in A Link to the Past, taking place after the Oracle games and Link's Awakening, meaning Ganon was defeated, resurrected by Twinrova, defeated again, somehow ended up coming back to life, being sealed and then unsealed by Yuga, killed again, and then reappeared finally in the original Legend of Zelda.

Zelda's safety

Why don't the royal attendants, and Zelda herself, try harder to ensure Zelda's safety? Even if we're talking the two timelines where Ganon hasn't reappeared a million times, people with access to a royal library should know that she's a prime target for the forces of evil (be it because of royal blood or the Triforce of Wisdom or whatever else the writers thought up that week). Why doesn't she ever learn combat and survival skills? Why doesn't she ever give up the Triforce of Wisdom and, I don't know, lock it in a vault? Daphnes did that in the backstory of The Wind Waker, so why doesn't she?

Most times Zelda's well-being is put in danger, especially in the two timelines in question where Ganon's revival isn't a constant, is usually due to some omnipotent villain that no one at the castle could be prepared for - in Spirit Tracks, she was even put in danger because people tried too hard to ensure her safety, thus prompting her to sneak out of the castle without an escort, and even Alfonzo, who had once been a legendary swordsman, was no match against Byrne when the two fought each other.

I would accept a Police Are Useless handwave for the sake of narrative expediency, but unfortunately that's not always made clear. Sometimes I'm left more with the feeling that the Hyrule army is simply incompetent rather than that they were prepared but the enemy's strength was unprecedented (oh hi Twilight Princess). I suppose that's a reasonable limitation of the narrative since we rarely have time to establish the army's strength before everything goes down, but it's still a flaw in the writing that makes things hard to gauge.

However, regardless of the status of her protectors, there's still the question of why can't Zelda herself be trained in the skills that allow Link to go adventuring? If anything that would make more sense — in Real Life, nobles were usually trained in combat from a young age, while peasants weren't allowed anywhere near the vicinity of weapons unless they were in the army. (Especially not swords, of all things, which were almost exclusively a tool of the upper classes!) Also, teleportation magic clearly exists in the Zelda universe (even if it's fairly rare), so it should be a no-brainer to give her an escape spell to counter all that kidnapping she always goes through.

Master Sword and Ganondorf

I'm very confused as to how the Master Sword interacts with Ganon/dorf and why Link's advisers always insist it's necessary. At first I thought it was the only weapon that could harm/kill him (i.e. Dungeons & Dragons-style damage reduction), but the silver arrows take that role in the early games, and in the later games other weapons work fine. It's necessary for the final blow in Ocarina of Time... but that doesn't kill him, because he's still only sealed away. Meanwhile, in Twilight Princess the sages manage to kill him with an ordinary (though presumably magic) sword. Why is it so important that Link gets the Master Sword when its track record is so inconsistent? Seems like it's more useful as a battery for sealing magic.

The Master Sword is the Sword of Evil's Bane. It's not technically the only weapon that can fight Ganon, but it's the greatest and most useful one. Ganon occasionally manages to dodge the worst of the effects one way or another, but it's still more effective than anything else would be.

Interestingly, it seems like the Master Sword's benefits are more defensive than offensive — it's used to break seals and curses, and allows Link to play tennis with Agahnim and Ganondorf (assuming the bug net/bottle deflection is a glitch or joke with no story relevance). Some people also theorize that it prevents Ganondorf from putting Link in a Crystal Prison like everyone else. It's possible that he's pushed towards it for that assurance, or because it becomes necessary for other reasons (like in Twilight Princess). But it still seems a little weird that people keep forgetting it's used to hold seals and that leaving it in the pedestal might be a better idea.

Killing sapient zoras

Zoras are clearly sapient. Why is (supposedly) All-Loving Hero Link so okay with murdering them, and why does no one ever call him out on it? This is particularly bizarre in Oracle of Ages and A Link Between Worlds, where Link can meet peaceful, talking zoras and then turn around and start murdering their cousins. This could also apply to moblins and bokoblins, who seem sapient in most of their appearances, but maybe Always Chaotic Evil applies there.

It doesn't matter that they're sapient when they begin lobbing fireballs at him. It's purely self-defense.

Murder is still ethically dubious even if it's in self-defense (especially since in this case it's often easier to run away). Link is a Heroic Mime so you could interpret his character as having darker shades of I Did What I Had to Do, but I'm surprised the peaceful zoras never find it awkward that he's murdering their countrymen.

Why is it only the Zoras that are at issue, then? What about all those soldiers of Hyrule Link had to kill in A Link to the Past? Hell, for all we know those aggressive Zoras are renegades and outlaws from Zora society, and at many times throughout history, being an outlaw meant anyone could do whatever they wanted to you, because you branded as outside the law.

"What about all those soldiers of Hyrule Link had to kill in A Link to the Past?" A very good point (though I've heard that was actually a mistranslation). Poacher is really the only video game I've seen that calls out that trope, which I think is a little disappointing. Anyway, yes, the obvious conclusion is that the aggressive zoras are apart from peaceful zora society in some way, but I still find the conspicuous absence of that (or any) Handwave a little awkward. At the very least, it presents a pretty big disconnect when the writers keep implying Link is an All-Loving Hero despite the murdering he does (or at least is capable of doing). Gameplay and Story Segregation?

Also keep in mind that on the "Downfall" timeline, Ocarina is the last game chronologically in which there is peace between Zoras and the people of Hyrule. So there's ample time in between Ocarina and Link to the Past for relations to sour to the point that the Zoras to become openly hostile. And of course, as with the Triforce splitting, it's also another case where later games have retconned or ignored concepts from a previous game: Aside from buying the flippers in Link to the Past, there was no such thing as peaceful Zoras until Ocarina was released seven years later.

"Ocarina is the last game chronologically in which there is peace between Zoras and the people of Hyrule." Wait, where does it say that? Hyrule Historia? Even so, they don't seem to mind a Hyrulean barging into their throne room in A Link Between Worlds. The zora village in Ages also seems pretty peaceful, but maybe it's just that Labyrnna didn't screw up foreign relations. Regardless, if this is a political dispute, that just makes it worse. Link is no longer killing outlaws you could justify as being horrible people, he's potentially killing people who are trying to defend their kingdom from a foreign invader. How does that not incite a war?

Why doesn't Ganon ever kill Zelda?

This is mainly for the original The Legend of Zelda, but that one doesn't have a headscratchers page so I'm putting it here. In the original, Zelda no longer has the Triforce of Wisdom, so she's useless to Ganon. Why does he bother to keep her alive? If he's truly as evil as everyone claims, it'd be more fitting for him to quietly kill her and taunt Link with her corpse when he charges in to save the day. (This would also end the royal line, which you think would be to his advantage since they're such a thorn in his side.) Was he trying to hold her ransom for the Triforce or something? The same logic could be applied to most of the other games — I think the only one that tries to justify it is The Wind Waker, where he says he wants to play nice.

There could be any number of reasons — killing the rightful, beloved ruler could trigger revolts and rebellions against him even if he wins. Keeping her around and forcing her into marriage would give him some facade of legitimacy in his rule. There could be other magical secrets besides the Triforce that he wants to get out of her. She could be a fallback hostage. Not having the Triforce of Wisdom doesn't mean she's useless to him alive.

Ganondorf is immortal while he holds the Triforce of Power, though; it's to his advantage to play the long game. His defeat is often influenced by Zelda's nebulously-defined powers throwing a spanner in the works, and ending the royal line would permanently remove that X-factor from play. Even if it turns her into a martyr and galvanizes Hyrule into defeating him this cycle (and I'm not clear how that would work, given that they're clearly powerless against him to start with), it benefits him in the long run by removing one more obstacle to his future victories. (Heck, he definitely would have won in A Link to the Past and Between Worlds if it weren't for Zelda's powers, or if he had offed her directly.) It's also just as likely that it throws the kingdom into despair and chaos, which also benefits him. Personally, I think the advantages outweigh any other use she could possibly have. The fallback hostage theory is an interesting one, but he never tries it despite having ample opportunity throughout the franchise, so it doesn't hold much water. (And why would he need to marry her? Triforce grants omnipotence, adding a "and they must consider me the legitimate ruler" rider to his wish would be way easier.)

...But on the flipside, preserving the line could be part of playing the long game too. The fact that TP Link has the Triforce of Courage by default seems to imply that Triforce pieces are passed down through bloodlines. If Zelda survives, the wisdom piece is quarantined; Ganondorf will always know at the start of a cycle who has it and, therefore, who he needs to target to start reassembling the Triforce. If the theory that corpses can't hold Triforce pieces is true, killing her would force the Triforce of Wisdom to find a new, completely unrelated bearer. Ganondorf has no idea who that might be, and if he's particularly unlucky, it might turn out that those X-factor powers are tied to the wisdom piece and not to the blood of the goddess. In the next cycle he'd have to start from scratch by tracking down the new bearer; perhaps he considers that too great a risk to remove Zelda from play in the current cycle.

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